The Devin Townsend Project, Hammersmith Apollo, gig review: Hevy Devy wavers in the capital

Devin Townsend’s 1997 album Ocean Machine marks a very interesting turning point in the career of the idiosyncratic Canadian genius. It was the first time Townsend had abandoned his post as the wild screaming lunatic that fronted Strapping Young Lad and laid his soul bare on a more ambient soundbed of beautiful, sweeping grand musical statements. It paved the way for his future continual success and this evening, London is treated to the very first performance of the record from front to back, a feat that The Devin Townsend Project will repeat later in the year with The Orchestra of Plovoiv State Opera in Bulgaria.

Norwegian avant-garde prog-metallers Leprous used to be former Emperor frontman Ihsahn’s band, a fact oft repeated probably because it’s the single most interesting thing about them. Not that Leprous are a bad band as such, but the five-piece do struggle to have a distinctive voice in amongst the prog-metal oeuvre. All the composite parts of a great tech metal band are present but without any of the character or flair attached to the big players in the field. The majority of the set is culled from latest album The Congregation of which there are a few gems hidden within the murk. The syncopated staccato intro that ushers in Third Law could give any tech-metal rhythm section a run for their money and when The Flood comes crashing in after an extended, muted dark industrial build-up, it’s undeniably powerful. But Leprous are a band comprised of many good moments as opposed to many good songs.

One of the bands primarily responsible for the resurgence in tech-metal (or djent as it was re-christened during the revival), TesseracT fare much better than their Norweigan brethren. Tracks like Hexes and Survival, both taken from the band’s latest album Polaris, sound absolutely huge within the cavernous environs of the Hammersmith Apollo. Frontman Daniel Tompkins’s stage patter occasionally sounds a little scripted, but it’s fantastic to see the band back with such an accomplished singer after a veritable cast of frontmen have made their way through TesseracT’s ranks (they’ve had 5 lead vocalists in total throughout their career). Despite this revolving door policy, TesseracT have managed to carve out a sense of their own identity amongst a tidal wave of imitators.

London has really been spoilt by Mr. Devin Townsend in the last few years. When he decided to put on a three-hour extravaganza that covered his entire career and included a reunion with Strapping Young Lad guitarist Jed Simon for The Retinal Circus, London’s Roundhouse was the designated venue to host the show. He also choose to play the first four Devin Townsend Project albums in their entirety across the capital and in 2015, he played another 3 hour show at one of the most prestigious venues in the world, The Royal Albert Hall. With such a stunning array of live shows in the English capital in the past few years, The Devin Townsend Project have made a rod for their own backs; whenever The DTP comes to London town, it has to be an event! The decision to make this evening the debut performance of Ocean Machine in full is a puzzling one. No doubt it shifted a few more tickets when announced back in January, and the 5,000 capacity Hammersmith Apollo is a vast space to fill by anyone’s standards. But it’s difficult to shake the feeling that tonight would have been better served with the more standard back-catalogue set that has been touring across the rest of the country.

Ocean Machine is undoubtedly a fantastic album and one that deserves recognition on its 20^th anniversary, but it’s also a record full of introspective moments that don’t always translate to a live environment. There are several moments during this evening where the crowd seem restless, notably during the ambient acoustic delicacy of Sister and the slow-build, ethereal 10 minute epic The Death of Music, both fantastic songs on record which lose a lot of their potency live. Townsend, always the affable showman, seems nervous this evening too; unsurprising given that some of this material has never been played live before but it’s unusual to see him so initially perturbed.

Thankfully, he gets his mojo back as the show progresses and there are undoubtedly some brilliant highlights this evening, most notably Seventh Wave, Life and an absolutely stunning rendition of Funeral. It’s telling however, that the best moments of the show are saved for the encore, where The Project rumble through three songs from 2016’s excellent Transcendence. Failure, Stormbending and Higher have all made regular appearances throughout the tour and the band undoubtedly sound at their most majestic during these more familiar songs.

Townsend is undeniably a maverick, a consummate performer and unique voice who deserves to be lauded as one of the finest progenitors of modern prog-metal. On this particular showing, it would have been good to see him have more confidence in his newer material, but even within the confined framework of an album show, Townsend frequently asserts his own singular vision magnificently.

With thanks to Emile Garcin for her photos