Devin Townsend at Amager Bio in Copenhagen, Denmark

Devin Townsend is a man of many faces. A funny joker who kick-started his music career as a vocalist in Steve Vai band has been changing his style so many times through the years and running so many solo projects for some people it was hard to follow. Always oscillating around progressive metal, the music crazy guitarist came to Copenhagen to promote his latest record ‘Empath’ released as a solo album (however together with few others standing in the front of the stage we were not sure if the show was for Devin Townsend solo, Devin Townsend Band or maybe Devin Townsend Project).

So, as mentioned before Devin is a joker and likes to make everything in a funny way. This time the whole idea was to create an atmosphere of a holiday island. In the first act, all musicians were wearing the Hawaiian shirts receiving drinks from a bar, which in fact was just a decorated keyboard stand. In front of the keyboard, Nathan Navarro playing bass with a parrot attached to his shoulder was another bright and funny element. The last one on stage was Devin Townsend himself with a huge smile on his face and the band started to play ‘Borderlands’.

At the song end Devin introduced himself and the show after what he asked the fans ‘so who want to party tonight?’. The answer was very short, loud and clear when the fans yelled back ‘me!’. And that was the moment when the party started for good – first with bit heavier ‘Evermore’, then ‘War’ with Mr. Townsend fulfilling his role of genius musician and a joker at the same time – making faces and poses in order to entertain the fans playing his custom, colorful guitar at the same time. Later in the show, he finally started to show off his vocal range jumping smoothly from growl to opera-like vocals. But in order to transform into opera singer Devin had to adjust his look as well so… he just jumped into a black dress and he performed the amazing ‘Lucky Animals’ with a little help from the fans joining him during the chorus.

Just before the encore, the band changed the clothes – this time looking more classy. To shock the fans the first song was ‘Disco Inferno’ a cover that left few fans with an open mouth. Then dropped another cover – this time Frank Zappa’s ‘The Black Page #1’. The show was closed with ‘The Kingdom’ and another great presentation of Devin Townsend vocal skills.

Whats should also be mentioned is the opening act – an amazing prog metal band called Haken. I saw this band several times before and they always amaze me. As usual, the biggest applause was caused by one of their biggest hits ‘Cockroach King’, but that was not only it. The band managed to gain few new fans with their short, 40 minutes set what was not a surprise after such a good performance.

Photos and Review by Kasper Pasinski