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Strapping Young Lad.
 While it will undoubtedly be one of the biggest metal releases of 2005, Canadian group Strapping Young Lad's new album 'Alien' proves to have a rather prosaic story behind its creation, according to drummer, Gene Hoglan. "At the end of 2003," he explains, "we were done with all this touring we'd been doing, and started writing the next album. Byron, our bassist, went off and did some touring with Fear Factory, while [guitarist] Jed was also gone, so Dev [founder and frontman Devin Townsend] and I just ensconced ourselves in the studio and started writing 'Alien'. It took us about six months of pretty solid jamming to get it all complete. We hit the studio by August, and we were rocking!"
'Alien' has been described by Townsend as the group's most "maniacal and outlandish offering to date," and listening to it certainly seems to confirm this, the album consisting almost entirely of majestic-sounding pieces that put me in mind of a lot of symphonic black metal. "I don't really hear the black metal in it," admits Hoglan, when I share my initial impressions of the album with him, "but we are rather symphonic in that we can do just about anything with modern technology these days. It's pretty aggressive; it's us doing what we do. It's the mind of Devin Townsend, man. It's pretty huge-sounding; it's pretty massive. I'm really happy with it."
Two tracks on the album that don't really conform to its overall musical theme are Two Weeks, one of the middle tracks, and the last listed entry, the noise track Info Dump (which is followed by a bonus live track). The first of these comes across as a veritable oasis of calm - the gentle, laid-back music on it a striking contrast to all the mayhem preceding it - and Hoglan affirms that that was the intent. "We wanted to have a nice, little acoustic ditty right in the midst of all this maniacal chaos," he says. "We figured it'd be a nice palate-cleanser: something that'd allow you to catch your breath after being assaulted by the first seven songs."
As for the peculiar Info Dump, "that's more or less a secret bonus track that we gave a title to and which ended up being thrown in as a title on the record. Devin loves making ambient noise. There's definitely a story behind the little pile of noise there. There's some Morse code happening, and some strange language that we can't figure out; it's not like the guy's yelling at you! It's just a chaotic way to end a chaotic record; it lulls you with some white noise-esque-sounding stuff, and then just takes you on a little journey. If you turn it up, it will blow your speakers, probably!"
Townsend has long had a reputation of being more than a little crazy, and a couple of pictures of him that appear in the CD booklet certainly seem to reinforce this view. So, I find myself compelled to ask: is he really as mad as he looks?
"Well yeah, kind of, kind of!" laughs Hoglan. "He's definitely got a work ethic like no other musician, like no other person I know. He definitely throws himself into things. He is definitely all music all the time; all creativity all the time, and that's great; that's a great barometer to work with. But we all know Dev; he's our friend, and he's not as psychotic as you might think, but he's not a normal person, which is to his benefit! It works great."
One final aspect of the album that I'm interested in discussing is its extensive use of backing vocals, with a large number of men, women and even children having made a contribution. Where did the group find all these people? "Well, there are people that I know in Vancouver," says Hoglan. "I moved here from Los Angeles, and when I got here, I threw myself into the scene, and decided to get everybody involved in creating massive things. So I just went to all the female vocalists that I know in town; we had a few days of full-on female backing vocals: giant gang choruses of all our friends and stuff. As for the guys' chorus, we just used a lot of our friends as well; it was sort of a case of, 'Number 2, come on down! We're going to have a day of crazy vocals!' Actually, Australia is represented on our new album in this area; we used a few members of this group from Sydney called Tourette; they were in town, so we had them come down and sing as well!"
James Brazel
 | 'Alien' is out now on Century Media/Shock. |
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