Strapping Young Lad
By: Justin Donnelly
 Canadian musical chameleon Devin Townsend is an artist who isn’t afraid to turn his musical talents to almost anything he sets his mind to. And while his many projects receive their fair amount of acclaim, there’s virtually no excitement that compares to the prospect of his inevitable return to Strapping Young Lad.
Two years on from the group’s comeback album of sorts in ‘SYL’, the four piece act (Consisting of vocalist/guitarist Devin Townsend of course, guitarist Jed Simon, bassist Byron Stroud and drumming legend Gene Hoglan) announce their almighty return with their fourth full length studio release in the colossal noise that is ‘Alien’.
While taking a break from rehearsals in rainy Vancouver, I managed to coax guitarist Jed Simon to find out what mood-set the band were in to create such an album as ‘Alien’, what Townsend’s own solo contribution to the album resulted in, the phantom Tom Jones track, feelings of alienation, stress (Or the lack thereof) and the reactivated full on sound that is Strapping Young Lad.
“It’s pretty full on. I guess that’s a great way of describing ‘Alien’! (Laughs) It’s an album that takes a couple of listens to really get your head around, and that applies to me as well. Even after going through the whole writing/recording process, it still took me a while to sit back and objectively listen to it other than from an insider’s point of view. I’m pretty happy with it actually. It just feels right. There’s nothing forced about it, and it’s completely natural. Everything about it is just right.”
While most of the material that makes up ‘Alien’ was written well before the band headed into the studio, there were a couple of tracks that were written while in there as well.
“The entire process of putting ‘Alien together took somewhere between seven to eight months. That’s from the writing, right up until the finished product at the end. There were a couple of songs were written during the recording sessions too. We were about halfway through recording the drums, and I was just playing a riff. Devin turned to me and asked, ‘What the hell is that?’ I said, ‘What. This?’ And the next thing you know, it became the song ‘We Ride’. Another track written while recording happened when we were tracking guitars in another studio. It was at that time we came up with the mellow track ‘Two Weeks’. The bulk of ‘Alien’ was written beforehand, but there were a couple of songs that came up during the recording process.”
According to Simon, the chaotic anger that is associated within Strapping Young Lad’s music isn’t generated from the mood the band themselves are in, but quite the opposite.
“The making of ‘Alien’ was definitely stress free. Actually, there’s never really been that much stress within the band. A lot of other people may see it differently, but we’re so close that we don’t see it that way, and it kind of deflects. Having said that, we all felt that making ‘Alien’ was that little bit easier than making any of the albums in the past. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Townsend was completely focussed on this album this time. Making ‘SYL’ was very stressful for Townsend, but only because he was recording ‘Accelerated Evolution’ (Under the band name of The Devin Townsend Band, and released in 2003) at the same time he was recording ‘SYL’. While we were recording in one studio, he was in the room next door doing tracks for his record. He would come in from time to time and let us know if something sounded good, and we’d just keep going. So he was just bouncing back and forth and all over the place during the making of those albums. So what little hair he had left got pulled out through that process.”
And it was Townsend’s excessive workload that forced Simon to rise up to the challenge and take a governing role over what ended up being ‘SYL’.
“I love ‘SYL’ because it really did end up being my baby so to speak. It’s exactly where we were at that point in time. I don’t like or dislike anything we’ve done more than anything else. Everything we’ve done is simply a progression of things, and every one of those things is an accurate representation of where we were at in that time. I think ‘SYL’ was the best we could possibly be at that time.”
Trying to describe the sound that Strapping Young Lad has created with ‘Alien’ is no simple task. However, having said that, ‘Alien’ is perhaps the missing link between 1997’s ‘City’ and 2003’s ‘SYL’, a view that Simon definitely agrees to.
“I agree with you on that view. That’s a direct result of the band coming together. It’s got the craziness and the chaos that ‘City’ has, but it also has some sort of structure and consistency from ‘SYL’ that I really enjoy.”
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