Devin knows how to put on a show

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Townsend is no stranger to musical diversity, and 2011 saw him complete a four-album cycle – Ki, Addicted, Deconstruction and Ghost – of which no two releases sounded similar.

Yet Epicloud takes his love of multiple genres to a new level: “I’ve rarely done the same things twice,” Townsend says, “but as I’ve grown as a musician, one of the things I’ve learned is that it should be possible to make different genres ‘play ball’ with each other while illustrating a common theme.”

Epicloud is a time in the creative cycle of Townsend that is unique and very specific. It celebrates the music of his past while looking forward to the future. A mixture of moods and styles summarizes Epicloud and the DTP to date, but this is not meant as a ‘definition’ of a career, rather a celebratory moment of creative liberation that isn’t held down by genre expectation.

While portions of Epicloud demonstrate why Townsend is so well-respected in the metal world, the album’s overall aural array of Epicloud actually marks a return to the musician’s melodic rock roots.

“It’s really gratifying as a musician to be invited into a ‘club’, for lack of a better word, that puts technicality and complexity on a pedestal as the pinnacle of musical expression,” Townsend says.

“But before I became fascinated with technical music, I was interested in melodic music and simpler songs. For example, I loved Def Leppard, I loved The Eurhythmics, I loved Enya, movie soundtracks and so forth.

“I feel in the past, my love for things that aren’t typically encouraged in the heavy metal circles made me hesitant to express my interest in it. Epicloud isn’t necessarily indicative of what I’m going to do in it the future; it was the moment where I allowed myself to put those hesitations aside and just go for it.”

If the prior four Devin Townsend Project albums carried a common theme of ‘working to overcome creative hang-ups’, then it’s fair to view Epicloud as ‘having overcome them.’