| Strapping Young Lad | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | February 11, 2003 | |||
| Recorded | September–October 2002 [1] [2] | |||
| Studio | Armoury, Hipposonic and Diamond Sharp Studios (Vancouver, Canada) | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 39:01 | |||
| Label | Century Media | |||
| Producer | Strapping Young Lad | |||
| Strapping Young Lad chronology | ||||
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| Devin Townsend chronology | ||||
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Strapping Young Lad (occasionally referred to as SYL) is the eponymous third album by Canadian heavy metal band Strapping Young Lad. It was released on February 11, 2003.
In December 2001 Townsend announced that, contrary to his earlier public statements, a new Strapping Young Lad album would be released in 2002. He emphasized that he was not "forcing" his product upon fans to generate record sales, arguing that his band—and its contract with Century—was never a lucrative endeavour. Instead, Townsend's motivation was the "creative anger" sparked by the September 11, 2001 attacks and further cultivated during their 2001 tour, [3] although Townsend would later downplay this as a factor. [4] For the first time, the album would be a product of collaborative writing; the band wrote "about half" of the material on the 2001 Foot in Mouth Tour, and the rest at home, starting January 2002. [5] [6] After playing a small number of festivals in 2002, Strapping Young Lad entered the studio in September of that year, to record their third album. [1]
Initial writing for the album reached as far back as 2000, when the track "Idom" was released on the soundtrack for Tekkōki Mikazuki ; this is a demo containing pieces later used for "Dire," "Consequence," and "Aftermath." The album's sound was somewhat of a departure from Strapping Young Lad's previous albums, Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing and City . Devin Townsend's vocals contain much more singing than before but also a lot of death growls and screaming, and rather than the blinding extreme metal/industrial metal styled songs of Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing and City, many of the songs were structured and produced in a manner more akin to traditional death metal. The overall tone is darker and more serious in nature and contains less overt tongue-in-cheek humour than other SYL releases. The raw production style in particular is different from other records Devin has produced; he would later on call the album "murky" and "dreadful sounding" [7] and claimed that he "phoned [it] in". [4] The slightly different sound on this album can in part be attributed to the fact that second guitarist Jed Simon plays the vast majority of rhythm guitars. This was due to Townsend's concurrent production and recording of Accelerated Evolution by The Devin Townsend Band, which was released only a few weeks later. In an interview with Enslain Magazine, drummer Gene Hoglan had this to say about the more raw sound on the album " the next album came out in 2003 and that was the self-titled "SYL", that was a little more raw bare-bones record, we didn't want to repeat "City", because "City" was like sample-heavy, and totally, we were being called an industrial band and all that sort of bullshit, and by the time we did "SYL", we liked being a metal band, so it was just a pretty raw metal record, not over-the-top samples or keyboards, or even the vocals weren't layered, and so that brought us to 2004 when we started writing "Alien". [4] [8] [9]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [10] |
| Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles | 9/10 [11] |
| Chronicles of Chaos | 8/10 [12] |
| Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal | 8/10 [13] |
| The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [14] |
| Metal.de | 8/10 [15] |
| Rock Hard | 9/10 [16] |
Strapping Young Lad was released on February 11, 2003, and became the band's first charting album, entering Billboard's Top Heatseekers at No. 97. [17] The album received moderate critical success. Nate Smith from Rockzone.com called it a "solid addition to the Townsend catalog", but "not an instant classic". [18] Xander Hoose from Chronicles of Chaos called it "a good album", but said that it is inferior to City. [12] Alec A. Head of Satan Stole My Teddybear wasn't impressed, writing, "Sadly, the songwriting putters out into a flaccid, heartless, faux-epic quagmire of riffs that have no destination, vocals that lack the ferocity and pure, unadulterated anger and emotion that Townsend exhibited on City, and an altogether forced, cold, and directionless sense of songwriting." [19] Strapping Young Lad differed from Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing and City in that it was less industrial [20] and more reminiscent of death metal; [10] the humour pervading the previous two albums became more subdued. [21]
All tracks are written by Strapping Young Lad
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Dire" | 1:10 |
| 2. | "Consequence" | 4:02 |
| 3. | "Relentless" | 3:03 |
| 4. | "Rape Song" | 3:09 |
| 5. | "Aftermath" | 6:46 |
| 6. | "Devour" | 2:53 |
| 7. | "Last Minute" | 3:58 |
| 8. | "Force Fed" | 5:23 |
| 9. | "Dirt Pride" | 2:40 |
| 10. | "Bring On the Young" | 5:53 |
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 11. | "Detox" (only available on Australian release) | 6:40 |
| 12. | "Underneath the Waves" (only available on Japanese release) | 4:00 |
Chris Valagao, Ani Kyd, Tammy Theis, Marnie Mains, Carla Levis, and Laurielynn Bridger.
Glenn Thomson, Denton Booth, Charlie Goler, Juanita English, Jeremy Glen, Blackie LeBlanc, Henry Goler, Jay Mosdell, Samanta Palomino, Eden Wagonner, Christ Stanley, Scarlet Stanley, Stuart Carruthers, Sue Carruthers, Sean Carruthers, Denis, Stevie J., La Sparka, Rossy Living, Dev, Jed and Byron.
| Chart (2003) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums (ARIA) [22] | 64 |
Devin Garrett Townsend is a Canadian singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He founded extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad and was its primary songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist from 1994 to 2007. He has also had an extensive solo career and has released a total of 28 albums across all of his projects as of 2022.
Strapping Young Lad (SYL) was a Canadian extreme metal band formed by Devin Townsend in Vancouver in 1994. The band started as a one-man studio project; Townsend played most of the instruments on the 1995 debut album, Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing. By 1997, he had recruited permanent members; this line-up, which consisted of Townsend on vocals and guitar, Jed Simon on guitar, Byron Stroud on bass, and Gene Hoglan on drums, lasted until the band's dissolution.
Tenet is a heavy metal band formed as a side project by Jed Simon of Strapping Young Lad and Zimmers Hole.
Eugene Victor Hoglan II is an American drummer, acclaimed for his creativity in drum arrangements, including use of abstract devices for percussion effects and his trademark lengthy double-kick drum rhythms. Though his playing style is very technically demanding, he retains high accuracy at extreme tempos, earning him the nicknames "The Atomic Clock" and "Human Drum Machine".
Accelerated Evolution is the sixth studio album by Canadian musician Devin Townsend, released in 2003. The album, written and produced by Townsend, was a mix of musical styles from alternative rock to hard rock to progressive metal. Townsend, the lead vocalist and guitarist, assembled a group of Vancouver musicians to perform with him on the album: guitarist Brian Waddell, drummer Ryan Van Poederooyen, bassist Mike Young, and keyboardist Dave Young. This lineup, the Devin Townsend Band, was Townsend's first dedicated lineup for his solo material, and was created as a counterpart to Townsend's extreme metal project Strapping Young Lad.
Byron Stroud is a Canadian bassist. He is the former bassist for metal bands Fear Factory, Imonolith and Strapping Young Lad, current bassist for metal bands City of Fire and Zimmers Hole, and studio bassist for 3 Inches of Blood.
Zimmers Hole is a Canadian heavy metal band from Vancouver. The band formed in 1991, and features former Strapping Young Lad members Byron Stroud, Jed Simon and Gene Hoglan, along with vocalist Chris Valagao.
Terria is the fifth solo album by Canadian musician Devin Townsend. The album was released in 2001 on Townsend's label, HevyDevy Records.
Alien is the fourth studio album by Canadian extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad. It was released on March 22, 2005. The album was written by Devin Townsend and Gene Hoglan over a six-month time period. The album reached No. 32 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart and No. 35 on the Top Independent Albums chart.
Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing is the debut studio album by Canadian extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad. It was released on April 4, 1995. Century Media Europe released a remastered version of the album on June 12, 2006, which includes the video for "S.Y.L.", several bonus tracks, and a 12-page booklet containing extended liner notes.
City is the second studio album by Canadian extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad, released on February 11, 1997. Frontman Devin Townsend assembled a permanent lineup of Strapping Young Lad to record the album, including prolific drummer Gene Hoglan, and Townsend's former bandmates Jed Simon on guitar and Byron Stroud on bass. The album was critically acclaimed, with Revolver naming it one of "the greatest metal albums of all time", and it is widely considered Strapping Young Lad's best work. The album was re-released in 2007 with several bonus tracks and altered cover art.
Physicist is the fourth solo album by Canadian musician Devin Townsend. The album was released on June 26, 2000, on Townsend's label, HevyDevy Records.
Synchestra is the eighth solo album by Canadian musician Devin Townsend, and the second and final album he recorded with The Devin Townsend Band. The album was released in January 2006 on Townsend's label, HevyDevy Records.
The New Black is the fifth and final studio album by Canadian heavy metal band Strapping Young Lad. It was released on July 11, 2006, debuting at No. 200 on the Billboard charts. A music video was shot for the album's sole single, "Wrong Side", and another video, done in CGI, was made for the non-single song "Almost Again".
Jedson Louis Simon is a Canadian guitarist. He was a member of supergroup Scar the Martyr and has been a member of numerous metal bands, including Front Line Assembly, Strapping Young Lad, Zimmers Hole, Tenet, and Vimic.
No Sleep 'till Bedtime is a live album by Canadian extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad. It was recorded live in Melbourne Australia, on October 12, 1997; however, the live tracks presented here are the only ones recorded before the tape ran out. "Japan" and "Centipede" are new studio tracks that were added by the label as a bonus material. The title is a homage to and parody of Motörhead's No Sleep 'til Hammersmith live album.
Ziltoid the Omniscient is the tenth studio album by Canadian metal musician Devin Townsend, released on his own label HevyDevy Records in May 2007, and distributed in America and Europe by InsideOut Music.
Devin Townsend is a Canadian musician, songwriter, and record producer.
1994–2006 Chaos Years is a retrospective compilation album from the heavy metal band Strapping Young Lad. The album contains tracks from all of the band's studio albums, as well as a DVD with live footage and music videos. The album had a European release on March 31, 2008.
When it was done, I felt almost no emotional connection to it, even considering I had written the vast majority of it. To this day, I think it's a murky, dreadful sounding record.
The record was recorded in tandem with Accelerated Evolution, which I believe I insisted on doing to counteract the uneasiness I was feeling about where SYL was headed. In fact, I put so much energy into Accelerated, that I almost completely divorced myself from the production of SYL. Jed played the guitar parts, and Shaun Thingvold mixed it without me.
