Devin Townsend - "PowerNerd"
Just a normal dork doing SuperMetal things
Devin.
Fucking.
Townsend.
THE most “Metal” Canadian ever.
If you’re not a fan of Metal, but you’re reading this anyhow, let me just try to illustrate for a moment. (If you’re familiar with Townsend, feel free to scroll down a bit.)
Once you break away from the nursing home of the Metal world, and its inhabitants, who only acknowledge bands that got big in the 80s, Devin Townsend is the biggest singular name out there. You can say his name to any Metal fan who has been in the scene for more than 2 years and they’ll know his name, and may even start gushing.1 He’s like our Taylor Swift and Beyonce and about a dozen others rolled into one person.
Okay, sure, I’m probably exaggerating just a bit. Mostly because the Metal supergenre is fractured along several genric faultlines. But still, it’s a valid point.
And he has this reputation for a reason. Many reasons, really.
Townsend’s first major appearance was as the vocalist for Steve Vai’s Sex and Religion,2 which garnered him a huge amount of attention and gave him enough clout to begin starting his own projects. Plural. Of which there are several:
Townsend started Strapping Young Lad, which released five albums between 1995-2006
Townsend released his initial solo album under the name Phunky Brüster in 1996
He began releasing solo albums under his own name in 1997. PowerNerd is the 12th.
The Devin Townsend Band released two albums — 2003 & 2006.
The Devin Townsend Project released eight albums between 2009 & 2016.
Lastly, he released an album as a member of the Country/Rock/Bluegrass duo Casualties of Cool with Che Aimee Dorval in 2014.
Discounting the album with Vai, since that wasn’t his project, that’s 29 albums in 29 years. The man is prolific.
And while he has developed something of a sonic signature, everything he does is still different and unique. It’s also usually incredibly complex and technical (which is why he is widely considered to be a straight Prog Metal artist, but do not try to constrain him because he will just defy you). He has done both minimalist and wall-of-sound. Strapping Young Lad was known for being some of the heaviest, angriest stuff around, and 2021’s Snuggles is one of the most soothing, relaxing albums I’ve ever put in my ears.
Basically his only weakness is lyricism.
He doesn’t stop. Period. Ever. And he has to constantly try out new approaches or find new ways to challenge himself.
Which brings us to PowerNerd. Reportedly, Devin gave himself two weeks to write this album. He wrote it in 11 days.3 This absolute madman put this whole thing together in less time than it takes me to decide what I’m having for breakfast so that he wouldn’t “overthink it”. The goal was to get back to heavier material, make a hard rock album (because his more recent stuff has trended much lighter).
He did that. And he did it his way.
The album opens with its title track, “PowerNerd”, which really sets the tone for the album both musically and thematically. It’s heavy, but it’s also incredibly dorky; Townsend never hesitates to intentionally leave off a layer of polish or lean into humor. I was at the start of my third listen when I realized that the odd sound at about the 2:48 mark in this song wasn’t just a stray guitar riff. I noticed it, specifically, because I was in the car for this listen, and I swear to God I heard my cat meow in the backseat so I turned around to look because what the fuck.
Obviously, my cat wasn’t with me. I live in a small city and I park my car about two blocks from the building I live in. There was zero chance that my cat was in the car.
But I did hear a cat. In “PowerNerd”. Because the lines where I thought Townsend was saying “Panic attack!”, the actual lyric is actually “Petting the cat”.
Why? I suppose for the sake of innuendo because the album at-large does play on several hard rock tropes. But the absolutely bonkers “PowerNerd” music video, of course, treats it more literally. And if you watch that video and are absolutely baffled by it, you should know that Townsend has, in an interview with Blabbermouth, defined “Powernerd” with the following response:
"I would say that a powernerd would be somebody that has a tendency that society has deemed weak or not valuable, whether that's empathy or being an insular person or an introvert, and turns that into a type of personal power. It's like, 'Okay, yeah, I'm sensitive to this, that and the other thing, but man, I am going to pull through! I am going to do things with that sensitivity that are rooted in strength.'"
It’s actually pretty fucking wholesome.
But the lyrics don’t get any better.
Unless you consider coffee to be holy — in which case, you’ll enjoy “Ruby Quaker”, which is the album’s closer. Its title is derived from a species of moth.
“Knuckledragger” is another song which needs a bit of an explainer. It is, perhaps, the song which plays the hardest on those hard rock tropes (“Gimme another beer man”; “I’ve got balls, I’ve got big balls”), and one of the ones that feels like the most typical radio-ready hard rock, though it’s also a little more dense and technical than your Nickelback or…ugh…Buckcherry.
Despite that it plays with those tropes, the point of the song is contained within a few of its other lines: “There’s no question now:/The idiots fucking rule”, among others. It’s not a party song; it’s a “did you see the fucking news?” song. And it’s going to remain relevant for a while longer.
The biggest thing here, though, is the missing guitar solo. That’s right, there’s a ~20 second-long hole in the song starting at the 1:53 mark. There’s still the backing elements, but nothing at the front of the mix. And that’s because Townsend issued a challenge to fans to write and record their own solos and submit them. And there have been several takers. Townsend is, supposedly, going to react and comment on his favorite at some point.
The album does have a bit of diversity, though, with some lighter moments in the mix, such as “Ubelia”. “Jainism” provides a nice mid-tempo-but-still-intense middle ground.
It’s yet another solid offering from one of the masters of our time. I don’t know if I like it more than 2022’s Lightwork, presently, but it definitely doesn’t fall into the trap of not being diverse enough which weighed that one down a bit.
I do feel like PowerNerd gets better as it runs. And it’s growing on me over subsequent listens. Because even when he’s trying not to overthink things, Townsend is a complex artist with a lot of nuance, and it’s taking me time to really start to spot everything going on in these songs.
On that note….
Rating: Teal Blue
I would be really fucking surprised if this isn’t true.
Vai (ex-Frank Zappa, ex-Alcatrazz, ex-David Lee Roth, ex-Whitesnake) is considered to be a legendary guitarist, so the fact that Townsend was introduced to the Metal community through him was an immediate and lasting advantage. Sex and Religion was Vai’s third solo album.
With a couple of exceptions. “Knuckledragger”, for one, had already been written before he started on this project.