LIGHTWORK

Always known for his massive arrangements and extremer than life Metal escapades, Devin Townsend seems to grow more mature with each release. For me his heyday isn´t long gone and he is further away from growing bald than ever. Since at least Transcendence getting more experimental with each release. Lightwork his newest work of what fans started calling "Therapy Metal" is far from the simple statement it was advertised as. Not stopping his widely known and for some even bearing on the overwhelming quote unquote "wall of sound" approach he still manages to be a lot more subtle with Lightwork than ever. Mostly in the department of small harmonic shifts with drastic colour change like in the prechorus of equinox. That little bit is a brutally complex stateoftheartjazzwhattheheck and I love its magic. And other hot parts like the final shift to minor at the end of Moonpeople for the last phrase. This part feels like diving into a deep blue sea of dreams. Lightworker works with brilliant dynamic shifts that are effectively passages as grand as damwalls next to flower beds, but he makes them as smooth as a milkshake. Dimensions is more prog in a few minutes than most peoples careers (to bring some of the prog review standards ; ) ) It manages to never break out and still maintaining the intensity of Strapping Young lad. Some of the songs are pure power pop fan service I have to admit. Looking at Celestial Signals and Call of the Void. But they are great anyway. And there is the onomatopoetic masterpiece heavy burden that manages to sound like radiohead with a childrens choir that slowly drift into some islandish stuff that then itself drifts to a passage of classical drama ending in something that sounds very cardiacsyy. The whole song is actually very cardiacs and hyper weird. Its one of my favorites on the album, though. Oh I forgot to mention Devin using his guitar like whale noise. The Ending song Children of God is actually a masterwork in modern symphony and a reason why for me Devin is more and more turning from a rock musician to a real symphonic classical master. And someday he will be appreciated for these dare I say divinely beautiful layers of sound. If you listen to only one Song from this album, then listen to Children of God. Its a mellow journey through his whole harmonic, melodic and rhythmic palette and often its like 5 songs playing at the same time. (listen carefully and with good headphones). An album about healing. Exactly at the right time...

So in the end Lightwork is more subtle and in a Pop sense the most Disney marketable piece he´s ever done. Somehow a marriage of his typical DTP Sound and the more New Age vibes of lets say Ghost. But on the whole a bit too directionless to really function as a whole. Especially Heartbreaker is - although packed with mostly fantastique ideas - a bit unstructured and you can truly hear that it was produced last minute, too. The ideas are all their though and I would like to see plenty of them more fully explored.

Very good album nonetheless.

Personal Rating 9/15

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