STRAPPING YOUNG LAD VS. OZZFEST

It’s safe to say that we’re addicted to Addicted here at the MetalSucks Mansion. The latest from The Devin Townsend Project is so infectious I keep expecting the CDC to quarantine us.

So Mr. Townsend is doing the rounds now, promoting the album, and he just gave a really terrific interview to our pals over at Noisecreep. A lot of the interview focuses on the dissolution of Strapping Young Lad, which I don’t find so interesting. It’s not that I don’t think SYL were an awesome band – both Vince and I fucking LOVED that band – but I’m glad they went out while they were still cool, as opposed to seemingly every other band on the planet, who apparently want little more than to get paid and disappoint their older fans by churning out lackluster product. And it’s not as though Townsend has dropped off the face of the planet or stopped making awesome music or whatever.

No, the part I find really interesting is where Townsend recounts 2006 stint on Ozzfest. Here’s an excerpt:

There was one point, early on, when the band was walking to the catering area to get food, and [guitarist Jed] Simon walked down the wrong ramp, leading an Ozzfest stage manager on a tear. “He went fucking ballistic on Jed, so Jed was like, ‘Fuck you.’ The guy went nuts, and pulled this rank thing on us, like we were a bunch of upstarts and we spent the next three weeks at war with Ozzfest. They wanted to kick us off, we wanted to leave… the guy who put the lineup together didn’t want us to leave.

“Finally, I went up to the Ozzfest guys and said, ‘We’re old, for sure, but you gotta know we’ve been doing this for 15 years, and we have no delusions of becoming the next big thing. We do this because this is what we do, and the label paid $80,000 for us to be on this tour. So either we’ll spend the rest of the tour hating each other or we’ll pull it together.’ And they were like, ‘We’re old, to… let’s just get along,’ so I just went up on stage every day after that and gave the show shit.”

This little tale doesn’t surprise me at all. We’ve heard plenty of stories of behind-the-scenes drama at Ozzfest, so… yeah. I’m kind of starting to wonder if anyone had fun doing those tours. Ozzfest has only been dead for a couple of years now and suddenly no one really has anything nice to say about it.

For what it’s worth, though, Vince and I saw SYL on that tour, and they killed, even if they only got to play for like twenty minutes at 9:30 a.m. or whatever ridiculously early hour it was. So, y’know, three cheers for professionalism.

You can read the rest of the interview on Noisecreep. And don’t forget that The Devin Townsend Project’s Addicted comes out November 17 on InsideOut Music; MetalSucks is exclusively streaming an awesome new song from that album, “Universe in a Ball,” here.

-AR