Z²

This album is a disappointment. Although it is not an entirely unexpected disappointment, it's certaintly a saddening one. Let me explain why you shouldn'tt buy this album, despite whatever fondness or nostalgia you have for Devin's music. Note: this review is pitched at those who have listened to Devin's solo music for some time. I suspect that his newer efforts, like the relatively populist 'Epicloud' and 'Addicted' albums, along with the 'Sky Blue' component of Zoltoid 2, are attracting a new fan base.

To my ears Zoltoid part 2 is more like 'deconstruction' part 2, but via the populist approach of Addicted and Epicloud. It doesn't sound like a continuation of the somewhat nerdy but strange, atmospheric and coherent yet complex offering that was Ziltoid 1.

Something fundamental has gone wrong with Devin's music lately. I fear that it is the end for him artistically. Essentially, the music has lost the 'cosmic' or mysterious vibe it had in the past. Albums like Terria are masterpieces, melding metal with ambient music and melodic song writing, to produce modern heavy-prog masterpieces with a modern 'psychedelic' edge and general atmosphere of wonder and quasi 'transcendence' (in between the jokes and tongue in cheek filler tracks which somehow mostly work). Sure, Devin still does 'prog', with Deconstruction and Ziltoid 2. However his prog is no longer coherent and so completely fails to take you on a musical journal (more on this below). And when he isn't doing non-coherent 'prog', he is doing happy-go-lucky music with Addicted, Epicloud and Sky Blue, or largely new-age ambient music with Ghost and Casualties of Cool.

So *when* did Devin's music go wrong? Sometime in the middle of the 4-part Devin Townsend Project installment of Ki, Addicted, Deconstruction and Ghost. I find Ki to be very good - a last gasp, perhaps, of genuine emotion and profundity before lapsing into either a) the all-inclusive nature of Epicloud and Sky blue, b) the completely incoherent and disjointed sounds of Deconstruction and Ziltoid 2, and c) the often boring new-age sounds of Ghost and Causalities of cool (though this last component of his new tri-part musical persona is the most significant). Hell, I even think Addicted was much better than epicloud and sky blue.

But back to Ziltoid 2. Like Deconstruction, the music is disjointed, coming across as a disorganised riff-salad. Admittedly it isn't as painful to the ear and disorientating as Deconstruction was, due probably to it's being mixed with the almost play-school approach of Addicted and Epicloud that any sign of Anneke van Giersbergen's involvement seems to betray these days. However, Ziltoid 2 seems thrown together, with the only thing keeping an overall narrative going being, significantly, not music but rather dialogue! I must add that I listen to a lot of old-school death metal. Bands like Morbid Angel, Incantation, Suffocation, Immolation etc. So challenging music is not alien to me. Music which doesn't stick to normal scales is not alien to me. Music which is bombastic and 'jarring' to outsiders is not alien to me. But music that has absolutely no internal syntax or narrative to it - to the point where the required narrative needs to be imposed from above in the form of non-stop dialogue - IS alien to me. There is only so much of disjointed djent rhythms obnoxiously overlaid with overblown choirs and periodically interrupted with cutesy dialogue that I can take.

The album has some good riffs and sounds, but there are no songs. Or no *pieces* (if the description 'song' seems misplaced in progressive music). Just disjointed sections of music. 'March of the Poozers' might be ONE exception, with some semblance of direction and completeness. Also, the tone of the album is, like Addicted, Epicloud and Sky Blue, pitched at a more mainstream, and younger audience. As noted by a previous 'reviewer', the album is a Jim Hensen style comedy. Devin seems first and foremost to be a career man these days, as opposed to the musical oracle he once was. So be it, but we should note this shift in what he is doing: from art to entertainment.

The Sky Blue component to this release is even more terrible than Ziltoid 2. Much of the time it seems as though Devin has taken the worst top-40 songs from commercial radio that he can find, and has pretty much covered them, whilst chucking in some ambient textures to give it all some air of 'uniqueness'.

I am saddened by this effort, as with some other of his recent efforts. I suspect that taking drugs and generally having his head in the clouds was essential to Devin making good music. Maybe he will prove me wrong. I can only hope so.

I would give this 2 stars in a non-progressive rock context. But only 1 as a piece of prog rock.