Canadian metal icon Devin Townsend is gearing up to release his latest forward-thinking artistic creation, the full-length studio album Lightwork on November 4. Arriving following months of hard work spent applying the record's finishing touches, the album's announcement came accompanied by the video for the record's second single Call of the Void.
Created by the tireless multidisciplinary artist himself, Call of the Void continues the story that begun in the clip for the record's first single Moonpeople, as Townsend explains.
"The concept of the song is based around the ‘call of the void’ as an analogy for intrusive thoughts. I first heard the term describing 'the temptation to hurl yourself over the cliff when your driving a car'… or to 'put your hand in the fire when you know you’ll get burned’ etc… thoughts that you know are wrong, but you fear that you won’t be able to control the impulses to deny it. The point being: often I feel we have a choice, and trying not to lose sight of that was very important to me during recent difficult times".
"All through lockdown, I really fell in love with ‘cabview train journeys’ that ‘Railway Cowgirl’ and others were posting on YouTube. Essentially, they are often full, first person journeys to cold and distant places, far from the chaos of the world, with a sense of constant momentum really calmed me. Maybe being on tour for so many years is what made it a comfort to watch during lockdown, but in any event, I started writing with the videos playing in the background in the studio and so I thought it would be appropriate for this video. (Thank you 'Railway Cowgirl’ for the permission to use these clips. if while viewing this video you enjoy the footage, please visit her YouTube channel and check out all her wonderful content.)".
"In regards to the ’story’ of these three videos, the character is now on the train headed to where the Lighthouse is located.
So there you go… song two. It’s about not letting the chaos of the world shake you. Trying to stay calm at our center to try and get through it all."
In celebration of the explorative brilliance of both Call of the Void and Moonpeople and in anticipation of the arrival of Lightwork, we caught up with Devin for a chat, in which he revealed five things we didn't know about the creation of Lightwork.
Five Things You Didn't Know About The Creation Of Lightwork
WHEN A TREE FALLS
"A tree fell on the studio during the making of Lightwork. I had made myself one of those instant things that you put in the microwave, those curry packages. I put it in a bowl and I was walking outside to the studio…I went inside, sat down and a massive fucking tree fell on the studio, took out all the electricity, missed my car by maybe four inches, it was covered in the branches but fortunately wasn’t hit by the trunk of the tree. And all the power went out, I couldn’t even get out of the studio because there was a huge tree in front of the door. If it had actually landed on the room I was in, it would’ve been bad news. We all spent two weeks editing by candlelight. And we had to take an extension cord from my neighbour’s place, that was like maybe 300 feet of extension cord that you had a to daisy chain one into another then into another, and plug it into one computer and a monitor."
DRUM SWAP
"The original drummer who was going to play on all of Lightwork was Morgan Ågren, who is my buddy from Sweden who played on my Empath record. I’ve also previously toured with him, but because of the pandemic, he couldn't get into Canada, he went to leave Stockholm and they wouldn't let him leave to get to Vancouver. So, we didn't have a drummer, and I had to try and find drummers locally. I couldn't find anybody, but then the guy that I had played the Bloodstock Festival with, Darby Todd, he’s based in London, but he's also got American dual citizenship. So, I contacted him and, on three days notice, he came out and he did the recording, which was amazing actually."
HEARTBREAKER’S COLOURFUL BACKSTORY
"The song Heartbreaker on the album was not meant to be on the album. It was originally a song called Honey Bunch that my friend Ché sang, and she's a great singer. But it was a very commercial song and we had Nile Rodgers from the Michael Jackson record play the guitar on it. It was a really cool song, but it was really commercial, and I was kind of torn by it because I'm thinking: “Man, it makes this record strangely commercial for me”. But I had used a sample on it from Barbie Girl and we had redone it, but after coming home from the tour, after like three months of touring, I was told when I landed in Vancouver that we couldn't get the right to the sample. So, I had three days to replace that song with another song, and I was thinking: “I don't have anything?!”. So, I went back and I took Heartbreaker, which was this strange song that no one else in the organization really thought, in its form that I liked, was going to be appropriate. And I said: “Fuck it!”. I mixed it, and then I put that on the record at the last minute. So, Heartbreaker was a complete left-field thing. It was not supposed to be on the record."
DREAM WINS
"At the very end of the song Children of God, there's a line that a little girl sings. She says: “We won” three times. That was added three days before I was supposed to deliver the record because I'd had a dream that I'd heard that vocal line: “We won. We won, we won”, I heard that in the dream and woke up and I thought: “Oh, that'd be awesome right at the end”. Because then the statement about it essentially is that you managed to do something you were afraid to do."
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
"Throughout making this album, I ate my body weight in avocado toast with sriracha. It's really, really good, you take a bagel and toast a bagel, and then I put butter on it. Then chop up the avocado, and then you put on some sriracha and salt and pepper. And man, I eat so many of those because it's like protein – quickly!"
Lightwork will be released on November 4th. Pre-orders are available now.
Call of the Void has been added to our Metal Maniacs playlist
