Artist: Devin Townsend
Title: Order Of Magnitude - Empath Live Volume 1
Genre: Alt Rock
Release Date: 23rd October 2020
Label: Inside Out Music
Review Flash
Canadian maverick DEVIN TOWNSEND is to Metal what Adam Lambert is to QUEEN, creating a feeling that no matter how much you throw at a project, you’ve still not quite cracked it. The former, one suspects, revels in his not-fitting-in status, whereas the latter is just A Very Lucky Young Man. This double live album recorded at The Roundhouse in London, crams ten musicians onto the stage and runs riot with every style of music thus far discovered to create either an incomprehensible mess, or a work of absolute genius, depending on your mood, inclination and generosity. There’s crooning, bombastic ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER-lite on ‘Evermore’, surreal noodling on ‘Coast’ (which manages to finish up sounding like GONG), and straight up shouty Rock and Pop on ‘Heaven’s End’. On CD2 you can close your eyes and clap along to ‘Deadhead’ for 8 minutes, revel in mini Rock opera ‘Castaway / Genesis’, perhaps wondering if JIM STEINMAN is in the audience, and then smile knowingly to the cheeky cover of ‘Disco Inferno’. So, as they say at the circus, roll up roll up kids! There’s something here for everyone! Perhaps that’s the problem though.
Conclusion: That craziness, and also technical know-how, is all over this album is not under question, but it’s loose and zany structure leaves it flapping hopefully in the breeze of impromptu at times, more a soothing for the ego of Mr Towsend than anything approaching essential.
Rating: 6 / 10
