Strapping Young Lad — SYL

The world has been demanding a new Strapping Young Lad album for years, but Devin Townsend always said there would never be a new one. Well, along came september the 11th, which sparked Devin's emotions into the right mood and here it is, the long awaited Strapping Young Lad album: SYL.

Strapping Young Lad's previous album City is still one of my all time favourites. The intensity it shows hasn't been reached by any other album I know of. Also the songwriting is untouched. Devin wrote everything on his own in a very dark period in his life. He could make stripped acoustic versions of the songs and they still would stand strong. This is not the feeling I get with this new Strapping Young Lad album. This time everyone in the band had something to do with the songwriting and I guess it's one of the biggest reasons why I dislike the album.

Almost all of Devin's albums are written by him alone, and SYL is the evidence that nobody should interfere with his songwriting abilities. The album has a couple of good ideas, even some songs are okay, but it never really statisfies me. The electronic / industrial feel from City is almost gone. It shows up in some songs, but never as good as before. The band also picked up some latter day Emperor influences along the way... this could be good, but I don't think it fits the overall sound. Just listen to Devour (is that the first two chords of the Beverly Hills 90210 theme at the start of the song?) and see for yourself, it could be Emperor. I know Emperor got influenced by Strapping Young Lad, but I don't like it the other way around.

There are still a couple of good tracks on the album. I really like Relentless, Aftermath and Bring On The Young. But overall SYL is a really dissapointing album. I get the idea they released this album to fullfill their contract with Century Media. This is just an idea, so don't kill me if I'm wrong, but it happened before.

So the album is quite a dissapointment in my ears, I really think it's overrated by a lot of people. Just compare it to City and you will hear the difference. I expect better from Devin Townsend. Get his solo stuff instead.

It's hard to rate this album properly. After a long thought I decided I give it a three minus out of five kudos. Two kudos is a little bit too low and reserved for the really shitty albums.