DEVIN TOWNSEND LAUNCHES VIDEO FOR “SPIRITS WILL COLLIDE†FROM THE INSIDEOUT RECORDS RELEASE EMPATH NOW AVAILABLE
Mar 29 2019
Canadian heavy music artist Devin Townsend’s latest album EMPATH is now available worldwide via InsideOut Records. To coincide with EMPATH being released today, the video for the song “Spirits Will Collide†was unveiled and can be seen here: https://youtu.be/AdHJurX0yVA.
Devin comments: “Here is the video for my Enya influenced, ‘commercial’ song. I love this type of mid-tempo, big, romantic heavy music. I would love to do a full album in this style somewhere down the line, and it’s the only one of its kind on the Empath record.
‘Spirits Will Collide’ as a song is pretty standard fare for me if you’ve followed what I’ve done over the past few years. It’s ultimately an ‘anti-suicide’ statement and it’s meant to be melodic and straightforward. A video with a CGI Gorilla playing bass and Elephants playing drums in front of a billion people is so ridiculously dumb that I’m surprised it makes me feel as happy as it does, but the theme of the song is essentially about trying to convince kids or teens to ‘hang on’ when they feel depression or suicidal thoughts. The story of the video is about a kid that has a fantasy about playing at a massive concert with thousands of people as a choir, animals etc…just the biggest concert he can imagine, and the strength of the sound and the intention of a bunch of people singing together is such that the sound blows away the darkness.
It’s admittedly a bit ridiculous, but I guess in a way I feel that beauty is much harder to be expressed quietly in this day and age, so the video is about saying it louder than ANYTHING. Without a multi-million dollar budget, it was hard to do. However, Kudos to iCode Team and the hundreds of extras for really pulling this out on a shoestring budget, I think it gets the point across.
The only thing I would say that if I was a kid imagining playing the universes biggest concert, I would have added a full head of hair in there for good measure =)â€
On this album Devin decided to see what would happen if all the styles that make up his current interests were finally represented in one place. To finally shake the fear of expectation and just do what it is he was meant to do creatively; EMPATH, true to the name, is about allowing the audience a feeling for a variety of musical emotions. The musical dynamics represented on this single album are broad, challenging, and immense. To approach this sort of work with a long history of what makes heavy music “heavy,†allows this to be done with a type of power rarely heard. This is a statement about not only pursuing creative freedom in a conservative scene, but also trying to show that heavy music is truly a valid musical tool. EMPATH is available on Limited 2 CD Digipak in O-Card (including an entire disc of bonus material), Standard CD Jewelcase, Gatefold 180G 2LP Vinyl + CD + LP-booklet & as digital album and can be ordered here: https://devin-townsend.lnk.to/Empath.
The full track-listing is as follows:
- Castaway
- Genesis
- Spirits Will Collide
- Evermore
- Sprite
- Hear Me
- Why
- Borderlands
- Requiem
- Singularity
-       Part 1 – Adrift
-      Part 2 – I Am I
-    Part 3 – There Be Monsters
-      Part 4 – Curious Gods
-      Part 5 – Silicon Scientists
-      Part 6 – Here Comes The Sun
The video for the previously released track “Genesis,†viewed over 670K times in 4 weeks, can be seen here: https://youtu.be/1n7uvokARQ4. The follow up video for ‘Evermore’ has a quarter of a million views in 2 weeks and that can be seen here: https://youtu.be/-zIxPUPWVq8.
Over the past few years, the success that Devin has slowly worked for has fortunately come with the power to control his own creative destiny. The recent successes with the DVD from a sold-out Royal Albert hall, or his 2012 ‘Retinal Circus’, or last year’s ‘Ocean Machine’ live DVD with the Orchestra and Choir of State Opera Plovdiv has put him in a position where with the new album EMPATH, he will once and for all define himself as a musical force outside of any particular genre classification.
Last year Devin announced a special ‘An Evening With’ tour that would see him performing acoustically, as well as taking part in a fan Q&A at each show. All tickets and tour dates can be found at https://www.hevydevy.com/tourdates/
The full list of North American dates are as follows:
May 16th – Town Ballroom – Buffalo, NY
May 18th – Starland Ballroom – Sayreville, NJ
May 19th – Aura – Portland, ME
May 21st – Mr. Smalls Theatre – Millvale, PA
May 22nd – House of Blues Chicago – Chicago, IL
May 23rd – The Sylvee – Madison, WI
May 24th – Pops – Sauget, IL
May 25th – Anthem @ Hard Rock Hotel – Sioux City, IA
May 28th – First Avenue – Minneapolis, MN
May 29th – The Garrick Centre – Winnipeg, Canada
May 30th – Coors Event Centre (fka O’Brians Event Centre) – Saskatoon, Canada
May 31st – The Ranch Roadhouse – Edmonton, Canada
June 1st – The Palace Theatre – Calgary, Canada
June 3rd – Commodore Ballroom – Vancouver, Canada
June 4th – McMenamins Crystal Ballroom – Portland, OR
June 6th – The Fillmore – San Francisco, CA
June 7th – Whitney Peak Hotel – Reno, NV
June 8th – The Complex – Salt Lake City, UT
June 9th – Mesa Theater – Grand Junction, CO
June 10th – Black Sheep – Colorado Springs, CO
June 11th – Sunshine Theater – Albuquerque, NM
June 13th – Mayan Theatre – Los Angeles, CA
June 14th – Rialto Theatre – Tucson, AZ
June 15th – House of Blues Las Vegas – Las Vegas, NV
Find out more information about Devin Townsend below:
DEVIN TOWNSEND online:
http://www.facebook.com/dvntownsend
https://twitter.com/dvntownsend
https://www.instagram.com/dvntownsend/
https://www.youtube.com/user/poopynuggeteer/featured
INSIDEOUTMUSIC online:
www.youtube.com/InsideOutMusicTV
www.facebook.com/InsideOutMusic