Live Reviews : Devin Townsend Project & Periphery @ 170 Russell, Melbourne 25/10/2015

Images: Rebecca Houlden
Words: Mitch Alexnader

Click here for the full photo gallery.

I’ve always been told a compliment sandwich is the way to go, so here’s the Periphery Tower special.  The sound tonight was great, half on account of the bullshit good sound guy, and half for the fact that they seem to get how a third guitarist works; so long as they’re mainly doing high weeldy introspective parts, your sound won’t be a messy of dark sludgy Whitechapel nonsense. And when the “heavy” parts of Periphery hit, they hit so hard the singer screams “MESHUGGAH” into the mic. So they also have fun on stage which is great.

Well at least the singer does. Which fucking Mensa graduate decided to put the two uncharismatic lumps of coal-shit front and fucking centre, relegating the two guitarists who look like they give a shit to the shadows behind the speaker stack? I thought a whiskey-enhanced sleep would’ve calmed my nerves about this, but no, fuck Periphery’s bass player; standing up there like a fucking pick-up artist the twat didn’t even have the decency to commit to the obligatory “oh we all headbang here” sections, stopping halfway through to look at the crowd like we’d collectively breached our dacks at the same moment. Fuck him. I would literally, literally, kill someone from a third world nation to get to his position, and he’s pissing it away by moping about like he has fucking Crohn’s. If you don’t want to be up there, don’t fucking be up there. Granted, maybe he was tired; go have a quick nap champ, no one will notice. Maybe something disastrous has happened and he’s pushing through; if that’s the case, maybe you should go home man. Perhaps he’s nervous on stage; have a fucking beer cunt. Or maybe he’s just way too cool and should chill the fuck out. How dare you subject me to the instrumental equivalent of twiddling your fucking thumbs while you’re onstage at a sold out venue. You’re in one of maybe six bands whose twatty double-album I liked so much I fucking bought, and you stand there and flip us off? Get bent. I should NOT go to shows on three hours sleep and I am sorry.

The underside bun to this compliment sandwich is this – holy hell I think their singer might be the best in the industry. This dude not only pulls off note-perfect renditions of what’s on the album (already impressive vocally), but then he has the audacity to add his own flairs to it. He crushed it, he sounded amazing, and fuck me if he didn’t work hard at turning around a crowd predominantly there not to see him. He nailed it, and hearing some of my favourite songs performed so tight live was great. Just maybe make the bass player shuffle his feet a bit more.

Devin Townsend is so god damn Canadian. Every time I see DTP live, I think to myself “Man, I really need to listen to more DTP.” And then I get my fill at the show and kind of forget about it. But this eccentric and loveable man is able to craft music so genius, so technical and yet accessible, that not knowing the songs isn’t even a barrier to entry – Devin crafts music that just “feels” perfect, and seeing him live is a great way to understand that it’s just an extension of his beautiful and gawky personality. He walks onstage to a thunderous round of applause and cheering, and without any rock star ego asks us “Oh hey, how you doing?” Before any big riffs, any climatic intros, or any other clichés, he just has a little chat, thanks Periphery, and gives us big smiles. I was half expecting an apology. And at a certain point I got it.

The gig had some pretty shitty technical difficulties, random glitch noises that wouldn’t be out of place on a Dillinger Escape Plan instrumental. After not addressing the problem for a while, I was ready to write the gig off as “fun but unfortunate.” But Devin, in his big positive way, finally brought it up, being in the level about the problems, telling us frankly that they’re trying to fix it but it probably won’t work; and then while they fixed it he lead us in a singalong with only himself on guitar. These weren’t minor problems; at one point an intro had to be restarted because of technical troubles. But a gig doesn’t stand or fall on technical issues, it stands and falls on how well the performer handles it. And Devin is definitely, loveably, a consummate professional and an endearing goofball. I feel lucky to have seen him pull off a gig with such problems. He made sure that the crowd felt loved, that we knew he was sorry, and that bugger it, we’ll have a good time regardless. And we did. It was a one off show and it ruled.

And even his backing band, hidden in shadow and getting on in years, were better performers than Periphery’s bass player. There are still tickets for the final show in Melbourne tonight. If you like ANY type of heavy music, it will be worth the cost, even if you just get a standard, “no near on stage meltdown worth of technical difficulties” gig.

SECOND AND FINAL SHOW IN MELBOURNE – ON SALE NOW!
MONDAY 26 OCTOBER MELBOURNE, 170 RUSSELL – 18+
www.eventopia.co / www.oztix.com.au / www.170russell.com

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