Empath by Devin Townsend
In some regards one could say Devin Townsend defined my decade of music fandom. I saw Devin for the first time in January 2010 as an opening act for Between the Buried and Me, and he was the subject of my first interview for this very site in March 2013. Townsend turned out to be far and away my most-listened-to artist of the 2010s, so it’s fitting that he released his latest and greatest album mere months before the decade came to an end.
Empath is a heart-pounding, hair-raising, and often hilarious foray into the human condition. Devin implores us to be better for each other’s sake while staring down the very real fears that make it hard to do so. He expresses this heavy contradiction through shifts in tone, volume, and genre over ten tracks and 74 minutes filled with seemingly every sound Townsend utilized over the course of his near-30-year career.
Incorporating such ambition into a digestible, much less cohesive, artistic statement would be impossible for most musicians. Nevertheless, Devin spent the 2010s drawing from a vast reservoir of influences and collaborators, so all that’s truly different here is his choice to no longer delegate certain musical choices to separate projects. This is a record with three drummers, seven guest vocalists, a women’s choir, and a 23-minute closing track, and all of it feels essential. Empath is the album Devin Townsend was destined to make.
-Nick Porcaro
