It felt rather strange sitting on school chairs in the afternoon at the Underworld. On the stage was a large Punch and Judy type box and we all sat around waiting to be introduced to Devin Townsend’s latest creation Ziltoid The Omniscient, drinking free beer naturally.
When Ziltoid put in an appearance it was a very humorous affair. We were told he felt a bit silly being a rubber head attached to someone (what you thought he was real) and we best keep on drinking as fast as possible.

There was a Q&A; session and Ziltoid was asked about the important things in life, like where the best coffee can be found, apparently Canada. I asked what we were doing here and why we were not in Starbucks over the road. The word ‘blurgh’ followed and not wanting a lawsuit against us it is best not to say what Ziltoid thought of the coffee from said establishment.

Ziltoid was quick to answer everything, being a puppet I had to ask if he had ever met Peter Jackson’s Feebles, “no they are feeble” came the reply to that. Nope he wasn’t trying out for Dr Who but he had held Miss Piggy captive once.

The subject of procreation came up, we were aware that Devin and wife Tracey had recently had a new baby boy Reyner. Apparently this was all to do with eggs and not marijuana. Things were getting personal and it seemed that it was the hand not the puppet doing the talking. Ziltoid then said he was quitting performing, children had made him tired.

Devin emerged from the box, with a look of resignation and seeming as though he had dreaded this moment. He was proud to have done the Ziltoid project all by himself and that was the way things were going to be in the future. Devin expanded on the fact that he was moving to the mountains and would be doing the odd record in this manner but certainly nothing else live.

It was heart to heart time. After 15 years in the industry he has had enough; certainly with all the bullshit and corporate stuff that goes with things and detracts from the music itself. He also wanted to go out on a good note rather than do an Axl.

He wanted to continue as far as producing music was concerned but the last place he wants to be is in a tour bus with loads of sweaty men. I asked if popularity was a problem and yes it was. Devin wants to disappear and would be happy taking a job washing dishes. The dreams of the coffee shop employee recounted by the Ziltoid project are self referential.

Strapping Young Lad and The Devin Townsend band are over but he still wants to do music for people with shit pierced through their noses! Music will appear on the internet in the future possibly of an ambient and acoustic nature. No interviews, no rock pretensions and no doing things for the record companies and the money. He hasn’t even been to see a live band for 15 years. “The touring process stops the musical enjoyment, I’m done, I’m tired simple as.”

Fast forward a few beers to a more in depth chat later.

On Ziltoid

PW: Ziltoid – where the fuck did that come from?

DT: “Me and my buddies were in a basement drinking and partying, kind of wasted, and we decided we should all make puppets. So everyone had to make their own puppet and we all had socks and crayons and everything. There were four of us and I was like ‘I’m going to make an alien that’s really into infinity and I’m going to call him Ziltoid!’ So I had this little sock puppet. My other friend had Bung Sock, and another had Plugger, because he had ear plugs for eyes and Blindo was another because he didn’t have any eyes. Then we recorded a song with our sock puppets and…it was stupid! It took an hour, we were drunk and having fun. Then afterwards I was like ‘I could take Ziltoid to another level.’ So that was really how it started – a bunch of friends just making puppets.”

PW: Ziltoid reminds me of Mars Attacks, Flesh Gordon and Futurama. It’s very well done.

DT: “My proclivities of things I like to think about, I’m definitely interested in chaos and infinity. Whatever I do that’s always going to work it’s way in there, but I just wanted to temper that with something a little more entertaining.

PW: Basically, it’s got to be pretty intense laying everything out on your own…

DT: “Yeah but it’s easier than you’d think. I’m a producer as well right? So as a result of that it’s really easy. As long as I’m organised and have a process it’s actually really easy. The only disadvantage of doing it by myself is that I get lonely…in a way. You’re always by yourself, you know? ‘Hey what do you think Dev? Yeah, pretty good Dev!’”

PW: But you had Ziltoid there!

DT: “Well he wasn’t actually there! He didn’t get finished until after the record was over. It would have been great if I had had him… ‘YES! MORE LOW END!’”

On Integrity.

PW: What I said to you earlier about integrity and everything, that is the main reason why you’re bowing out?

DT: “Oh yeah, yeah.”

PW: I can’t blame you, you’ve had a child and everything and you’ve been in the media attention so much.

DT: “By no means am I doing it for any altruistic reason. I’m not doing it to say ‘I’m keeping my integrity’, I think I have more of a fear of success. I want to have a good time, I want to hang out with my friends and laugh about shit, I want to make music where I can just say ‘hey check this out, this is crazy, have a listen…and anyway, what did you do today?’ But as far as doing another album…”

PW: Being told to do another album and having a contract…you’ve had enough of it.

DT: “Yeah and the thing with the Strapping thing is that, it might sound cheesy but whatever I say I’m going to do I’m going to do. I told them I’d do five records – I did five records. At the end of it they offered us this big deal, we’ll resign you, we’ve got all these big bands that’ll take you out on the road now. I just said ‘I’m done, I told you, I’m done.’ There’s a good chance that if it hadn’t gone to the level that it has then we might be doing it still.”

PW: What are you going to say, three or four years down the line, you’ve had all the black metal bands like Emperor and Immortal who’ve split up and then all of a sudden they get offers and they reform and headline huge festivals. What’s going to be your opinion when you’re asked to do that?

DT: “Well I really hope that I’ll be able to say no.”
“It’s like…”

PW: It’s a difficult thing to give an answer to.

DT: “It’s only difficult because if my kids are starving… you know? But there’s a good chance with the production and doing music elsewhere that that isn’t going to be the case. I honestly feel that if you can make a living…success is completely…you’re always going to chase it right? If you have success it’s never going to be as big as what could happen next. You’re constantly chasing this imaginary thing and at the end of it, I go back to the Metallica example again…you look at Some Kind Of Monster and those guys are fucked. Ah dudes, they look terrified, they don’t look like happy people. You’ve got Kirk Hammett, ‘I’m a cowboy now! I live out in the fields and I don’t want anybody to talk to me about Metallica.’”

On future projects.

PW: When you say ambient music, what is your idea of what you really want to go into?

DT: “Well I really like, there’s this band from Newcastle from years ago called Zoviet France. I love them. It’s just like moods. I like sounds right? I’ve got a little studio and it’s a real modest studio, just a Pro-Tools LE system etc but because of that if I have an idea to make a puppet record, three months later it’s done.

PW: It’s kind of like you’ve got Godflesh, you’ve got Strapping Young Lad and you’ve got Jesu – the other level. So you maybe want to tone down things?

DT: “Maybe not even that. There maybe some stuff I do in the future that is as brutal and heavy as Strapping, it’s just not going to be Strapping. I think that’s the main crux of it, I want the ability to do whatever I want without a whole fleet of lawyers and record companies analyzing it and telling me what to do. It’s like the success of doing it that way doesn’t mean enough to me as an artist or a person for me to fight about it. I’m not going to fight anymore I’m just going to do it the way I want to do it. Why am I going to do it that way and be so obstinate? Because I don’t care enough about it to spend that much time on it. Ziltoid, from the first month to the last note mastered was four months. Without having any music to having a completed record was four months. It was a concept and a puppet and a record and a myspace and the sense of achievement for me was like ‘great – done.’

It’s like when you’ve got a project at school, you do it and you hand it in. You don’t sit around going ‘remember that project I did? That was awesome – in fact I’ve got project three and four coming up…’ I prefer to be like Ziltoid that was great. I got to make a puppet and come to England and hang out and do some really ridiculous stuff and now…what am I going to do next? I’ve got a whole load of ideas about what I’m going to do next and they’re completely different to anything I’ve done. And then they’ll be done and I’ll do something else right? I think it will be just put it up on my website and then whoever is interested in what I do can just access it and listen to it. But I definitely don’t want to force it on anyone. I really like doing things myself too. It might not be super slick or super cool but at least I did it. I like doing layouts, I like doing art, I like doing puppets…”

On cathartic endings.

PW: It seems completely cathartic. You want to go off, chill out, get on with your family and stuff like that…this round of press conferences and stuff, are you going to feel better after this?

DT: “Well… I mean…”

PW: You want to get out of the public eye, totally.

DT: “Yeah. I just don’t think I’m super-interesting. Well we all are. I think that’s the thing that’s sort of disconcerting about it. I’m just like ‘listen to the music it’s totally cool, but talk to Ziltoid he’s got tons of shit to say.’ For me being the object of attention really sucks. I’m a pretty shy dude…”

PW: You say you’re shy but you could do stand up comedy or something like Henry Rollins or something like that, you’ve got that in you. You’re funny!

DT: “Yeah thank you, but at the same time though I don’t want to be known as the funny guy. Just because I can make people laugh, or I can play heavy metal really well, or scream really well or whatever…I’d rather do that for my friends than for a huge crowd of people. At the end of the day you end up becoming ‘the funny guy’ or ‘the metal guy’…”

PW: At Download last year you had a laugh basically, throwing out insults left, right and centre, and it worked. Stand up comedy…

DT: “Yeah that whole attitude just came from me not caring. I was like ‘why are you clapping this is fucking retarded?’”

PW: I like the idea of what you said about Metallica going three albums too far. You’re going to get off…

DT: “We probably should have got off an album before we left right?”

PW: Yeah true. Are you going to be able to chill and cope with your family…

DT: “Oh yeah definitely.”

PW: …keep out the limelight and not play live?

DT: “If I’m making enough money to survive then I don’t see why not. I think that there’s enough people and enough bands that it won’t be long before people are like ‘oh yeah I remember Devin, he used to play live and he put out some pretty good records’. Honestly, I’m thirty five and I’ve had so many experiences. There’s not a lot in the industry that I wanted to do that I didn’t. I’ve nothing really to prove to myself and that last round of Strapping was too much, it ruined it for me.”

PW: Are the rest of the band clear on what’s happening?

DT: “They’re friends of mine first and foremost. I’m sure they’d love to continue but they also know that if it’s going to fuck your buddy up then that’s not cool, right?”

So there you have it. It can’t be easy being in the public eye and wanting to be left alone. Stop the world I want to get off. Devin Towsend should certainly be respected for this and for coming out and baring his soul to the ever hungry media. There is no point in doing something you no longer believe in and if you are burnt out a rest is needed. Let’s hope the man gets the peace he needs in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere, for the rest of us, we have gems like City and Infinity and a wealth of other material to enjoy. This chapter is definitely closed.

Interviewed by Pete Woods
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