History Trivia / DevinTownsend

* OldShame: He feels this way about ''Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing'', calling it "nothing but remixed demos" in various interviews. He did love "In the Rainy Season" off it though, and still played it at almost every SYL show till the end.
** He seems to regard ''Physicist'' and ''Infinity'' to be this, due to his self-described messiah complex and then-untreated bipolar disorder, compounded by his heavy drug use at the time those albums were produced.

** Breakdown 3: Showed up at a press conference to announce that he was withdrawing from music to become a puppeteer. This would turn into ''Ziltoid the Omniscient''.
** Breakdown 4: Detoxed himself leading up to 2009's ''Ki'', when he realized he had difficulty doing any writing without booze or weed. He also admitted to an internet porn addiction, calling it "worse than crack cocaine".

* OddFriendship: with Wrestling/ChrisJericho and [[{{Music/Nickelback}} Chad Kroeger]], the latter of whom he's actively grateful for because without his encouragement, he'd have never taken the risks that he did with ''Empath''.

* PromotedFanboy: Anneke van Giersbergen got the job as vocalist for the Devin Townsend Project by sending Devin a video of herself singing "Hyperdrive" from ''Ziltoid''. She would later sing it on ''Addicted''.

* OddFriendship: with Wrestling/ChrisJericho and [[{{Music/Nickelback}} Chad Kroeger]], the latter of whom he's actively grateful for because without his encouragement, he'd have never taken the risks that he did with ''Empath''

* TalkingToHimself: Devin did just about everything for ''Ziltoid the Omniscient''. All singing parts, most of the spoken vocals, guitars, drums, bass, keyboards, production...

* FanNickname: Hevy Devy, The Mad Professor.

* CashCowFranchise: Ziltoid has definitely become this in recent years. The sheer amount of merchandise you can get (t-shirts, coffee cups, hats and, of course, the coveted Ziltoid hand puppet) proves this.

** He has expressed similar feelings about the DTP "style" of music and was about to totally abandon it as part of his fifth CreatorBreakdown (see below). His new management team had to convince him with ToughLove to carry on making, in his words, "songs with choruses".

* IAmTheBand: It's not the Ryan Van Poederooyen Project, is it?
** However, Strapping Young Lad contained some significant contributions from the other members.
*** On the self-titled album, most of the rhythm guitars were tracked by Jed, which explains why the guitar work sounds very different when compared to other SYL albums.
** Subverted with the ''Casualties of Cool'' project, as it is a fairly equal collaboration between Devin and Che Aimee Dorval.
** Also subverted with ''Transcendence''. He allowed the other members of his ProductionPosse to contribute as much as they wanted to the music. According to Devin, this was supposed to be an exercise in seeing if he was able to kick himself out of this mentality whilst still being able to create something that was "his".
** Played straight with ''Ziltoid the Omnsicient'', as every aspect of the album's creation was handled by Townsend himself. See the below TalkingToHimself example.
** These days, he tends to hire in outside producers to take over aspects of the production process that he would have normally done himself in the past.

* SpecialGuest:
** ''Deconstruction'''s lengthy guest list includes [[Music/{{Opeth}} Mikael Åkerfeldt]], [[Music/{{Emperor}} Ihsahn]], [[Music/AfterForever Floor]] [[Music/{{Nightwish}} Jansen]], [[Music/BetweenTheBuriedAndMe Tommy Giles Rogers]], [[Music/{{Cynic}} Paul Masvidal]], [[Music/{{Gojira}} Joe Duplantier]], [[Music/TheDillingerEscapePlan Greg Puciato]], and several other well-known metal vocalists. Townsend, for his part, has returned the favour in some cases; he can be heard on the track "Introspection" from Ihsahn's solo album ''Eremita'', for example.
** On ''The New Black'' you can hear Creator/BifNaked on the first verse of "Fucker" and [[Music/{{GWAR}} Oderus Urungus]] on the final verse of "Far Beyond Metal".
** On ''Dark Matters'', the voice of Captain Spectacular is Wrestling/ChrisJericho.
** ''Empath'' has one of the largest casts of guests to date, featuring Anup Sastry, Samus Paulicelli (Better known as 66Samus), Anneke again, Chad Kroeger, Steve Vai, Morgan Agren, Elliot Desgagnes, Mike Keneally, Nathan Navarro, and the Elektra women's choir.

* BigNameFan: Vindsval of Music/BlutAusNord is on record as an admirer.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Much like ''Ziltoid'', ''Ghost'' was supposed to have a sequel. Devin canned it because he felt the music that he was recording didn't fit the vibe, so he cancelled it. Most of the songs recorded ended up in the box set ''Contain Us'' and a bonus disc in ''Casualties of Cool'''s deluxe edition.

** ''Empath'' has one of the largest casts of guests to date, featuring Anup Sastry, Samus Paulicelli (Better known as 66Samus), Anneke again, Chad Kroeger, Steve Vai, Morgan Agren, and the Elektra women's choir.

** He seems to regard Physicist and Infinity to be this, due to his self-described messiah complex and then-untreated bipolar disorder. (As discussed in the episodes of the Devin Townsend Podcast concerning those albums)

* OddFriendship: with Wrestling/ChrisJericho.

** Not to mention all the various things he's done with Steve Vai over the years.

** Breakdown 5: When he declared he was taking a year off after the release of Z2 because he was burned out. He explained in an interview with long time friend ChrisJericho that he announced this because he had lost all direction with his career; within a few months of the announcement he had hired a new management team to help him focus his career and began working on a new album, which became 2016's ''Transcendence''.

** Devin is quite a prolific producer. He produced ''Natural Born Chaos'' by Soilwork, ''As the Palaces Burn'' by Lamb Of God, ''Beyond Hell'' by GWAR and ''Controller'' by Misery Signals, and that's only '''a few''' of the albums he's been involved in as a producer in some way or another.