How in the world can the winter fall apart?
Ki is the eleventh album by Devin Townsend, released on May 25, 2009, as the first installment of his Devin Townsend Project album series launched after disbanding his extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad. This album series was made in his period of self-discovery of learning how to write music without drugs, as giving them up was a factor in disbanding SYL and his side-project The Devin Townsend Band. As a result, the music on this album is decidedly more reserved and leaning mainly towards Progressive Rock with only a handful of tracks featuring distorted guitar. Many of the songs deal with restraint and self-control.
It was followed six months later by the second Devin Townsend Project installment, Addicted.
Tracklist:
- "A Monday" (1:43)
- "Coast" (4:46)
- "Disruptr" (5:49)
- "Gato" (5:23)
- "Terminal" (6:58)
- "Heaven's End" (8:54)
- "Ain't Never Gonna Win" (3:17)
- "Winter" (4:48)
- "Trainfire" (5:59)
- "Lady Helen" (6:05)
- "Ki" (7:21)
- "Quiet Riot" (3:02)
- "Demon League" (2:55)
Trope the chaos, know who we are!:
- Album Intro Track: "A Monday" is a nearly two-minute melodic guitar instrumental that segues into "Coast"
- Boléro Effect: The second half of the title track consists of a repeated riff that has some backing vocals and a distorted guitar slowly fading in, climaxing with a powerful vocal from Devin.
- Epic Rocking: Many tracks surpass or go near the six-minute mark.
- Fading into the Next Song: Most of the songs flow seamlessly, with the most notable transition being from "Ain't Never Gonna Win" to "Winter".
- Instrumentals: "A Monday" and "Ain't Never Gonna Win", though the latter has some wordless scat vocals in it.
- Limited Lyrics Song: "Winter" has just a single line repeated throughout."How in the world can the winter fall apart?"
- New Sound Album: A reserved Progressive Rock album with minimal distorted guitar, with contrasts the standard Progressive Metal sound of Devin Townsend's solo career and especially the extreme metal of Strapping Young Lad.
- Silence Is Golden: There almost 40 seconds of silence at the end of "Quiet Riot".
- Studio Chatter: Appears throughout, most prominently near the end of the last heavy track, "Heaven's End".
- Textless Album Cover: The standard cover. The international edition has a slipcase with the DTP logo as its text.
- To the Tune of...: "Quiet Riot" is sung to "Cum On Feel the Noize", originally by Slade but famously covered by Quiet Riot.
- Train Song: "Trainfire" starts with a train whistle. The outro has a short guitar part that resembles a train horn.
