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Devin Townsend - Ziltoid The Omniscient CD (album) cover

ZILTOID THE OMNISCIENT

Devin Townsend

 

Experimental/Post Metal

4.14 | 643 ratings

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bessi
5 stars This album has really grown on me and nowadays I think it perfect. It's like an amalgam of everything Devin Townsend has done; Speed pop from Physicist, weirdness from Infinity, melody from AE and Oceanmachine, atmospheres from Terria and ferociousness from SYL. Here there is humour, seriousness, beauty & anger in the vocals. The music is extremely varied; soothing passages, blastbeats, catchy hooks and gripping riffs. Devin has delivered some of the best melodies ever. The music can alter swiftly into something completely different from just a moment ago. Devin grunts, sounds like a siren and gives his sincere & beautiful melodic vox. The music gets weird but not as weird as on some parts of Infinity. The lyrics are beyond weirdness but that doesn't matter,they can be funny. The spoken interludes aren't too long for my taste and many of them blend in with the music. Somebody mentioned it was reminiscent of Douglas Adams' Hitchikers guide. It also makes me think of Calvin & Hobbes animated comic sketches, the daydreaming space adventure ones. Two memorable moments(although the album is full of them): "Hyperdrive" sounds like a mix of Christeen(Infinity) and Sit in the mountain(Christeen EP). I would call it calm metal. On "Omnidimensional creator" Dev uses melodies from albums Ocean machine and the New black(SYL). Only Devin nerds like me will figure that out. The song is my absolute favorite of the album. After some cool harshness the song slows down & the technical melodic Dev guitar mingles with his mesmerizing voice. Then it closes with some fast riffing and melodic singing and the goes to another brutal chapter in the finish. "We are all puppets!" Devin reinvents himself everytime! Most varied release. A classic. His best album since Terria and probably on the top 3 for me.

I wonder why there are no lyrics on the booklet for Hyperdrive? Maybe they didn't fit into the theme?

The limited edition has extra messages from Ziltoid and Dev showing his gear(multimedia)

bessi | 5/5 |

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