“The idea of lead guitar is that there’s focus put on it, and during this period I just didn’t want any focus to be on me”: How Devin Townsend relied on his production process to deliver his new album from the depths of depression and grief

PowerNerd opens to the exhilarating sound of Devin Townsend in full-bore maximalist mode – but the record soon takes a left turn. The intensity remains but is trained elsewhere, after the Canadian prog-metal maverick was blindsided by tragedy while writing the album. “The process of making it was so complicated on a personal level,” he says.

“We went through a bunch of things as a family that were very upsetting, and so what started as a straightforward party record ended up being this very strange record about death.” He admits: “The whole thing kicked my ass, man. I think I’ve just been so divorced from emotions for so much of my life; then finally we had a couple of experiences that you can’t run from, and you can’t bury your head in the sand.

You have to deal with them.” Without offering detail, Townsend says grief and loss overwhelmed him to the point where the project was nearly abandoned. A cup of coffee was one of the reasons why it wasn’t.

“When I was really deep in the depression of it somebody came by and said, ‘Hey, you look like you could use a coffee!’” he says. “We went went out for a coffee and I remember thinking, ‘Yeah, it’s funny how the process of grieving also includes that resolution.’” That was when the pendulum of emotion began to swing back the other way.

“The theme is essentially the process of loss,” he says. “And the process of grief has stages, whether or not stages include acceptance or anger, resolut.