STRAPPING YOUNG LAD: City

Produced by Devin Townsend

Released: 1997

What do you do when your previous album sold a stunning 120 copies in the US alone, you have no band, no money and you're sleeping on your A&R guy's sofa eating noodles and margarine and listening to Morbid Angel and Shihad? If you're Devin Townsend, you write some of the angriest and most intense heavy metal music of all, get Gene Hoglan to play drums for you and record them as City.

City really is the last word in angry music, created not by a group on its way to being comfortable millionaires pissed off about being heckled or getting bad reviews but by a frustrated genius existing hand-to-mouth for months. Sure, there's some other guys who play on this, but City is Devin Townsend's album; it is his energy, vision and rage that drives it smashing through every pre-conceived idea about intensity and extremity. To the untrained ear or a first-time listener, this will be nothing but a ceaseless cacophony as Townsend crams every space with as much noise as possible. It sounds at first like extremity for the sake of it, but as overwhelming as the relentless, multi-tracked guitar onslaught is, repeated listenings reveal Strapping Young Lad's genius for infectious hooks and melodies that surprise with their ability to seemingly come from nowhere and add further dimensions to the music. There is also Townsend's bizarre sense of irony, with his minimalistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics both evoking his frustrations and rage and poking fun at the ludicrous extremity of metal.

And, as mentioned several times already, City is ludicrously extreme. "Oh My Fucking God" is one of the heaviest, most full-on and over-the-top examples of industrial grind ever recorded with Townsend's apoplectic vocals pushing the envelope into the realms of the truly insane. Similarly, "All Hail the New Flesh" and "Detox" are triumphs of noise and total chaos but even there a cleverly-timed keyboard surge or poppy melody will suddenly burst forth, making you wonder how they ever got there in the first place. "Home Nucleonics" is another crushing barrage but in "AAA" a monstrous groove takes precedence until "Underneath the Waves" unleashes further mayhem. The Cop Shoot Cop cover "Room 429" gets in the way a bit, somewhat breaking the flow of the album because the epic, surging "Spirituality" would be the perfect way to come in after the layered screaming of "Underneath the Waves". A minor quibble however, because CSC was a major inspiration for City so the homage is somewhat deserved.

This is an exhausting and overwhelming work, a masterpiece that combines both bombast and subtlety in a curious and staggering unison and a statement in the extreme that may never be matched.

1. Velvet Kervorkian
2. All Hail the New Flesh
3. Oh My Fucking God
4. Detox
5. Home Nucleonics
6. AAA
7. Underneath the Waves
8. Room 429
9. Spirituality

Rating: 100%