In a personal weird moment of everything coming full circle the first interview that was posted back on Sonic itself when it launched was with the man who had put Devin on his album Sex And Religion in Steve Vai so the chance to interview a musician whose work I’ve admired since hearing the track ‘Detox’ back in 2006 before his headline slot at Damnation Festival was not one to be missed..

Throughout this interview get ready to learn Devin’s thoughts on the cult of Ziltoid, the shows showcasing all four DTP albums in London, the upcoming acoustic shows with Dave McPherson and what future ideas he has coming up.

So how does it feel to be playing the Damnation Festival?

It’s fun man! It’s cool for us to be involved with a lot of bands that we really like on this, it’s a festival that includes a bunch of bands that I am personally very fond of plus the UK has been going well for this whole thing recently and I was thinking about it the other day fifteen of the most influential bands out of my life are from the UK. [laughs] It’s pretty cool for me.

You’ve got the shows coming up in London, how do you feel about those?

Nervous as shit! It’s gonna be great but it’s also going to be what it is right? Four brand new projects, three of which have never been played before or even rehearsed more than twice, incredibly difficult music, tons of visuals, special surprises and all that stuff. So I’m just hoping it goes off that the energy is carried off by the people that are there because it’s definitely been a challenge.

All these shows we have people like Amplifier and Shining that are just these great bands so it can go one of two ways. Even if it’s a massive failure it’s going to be an awesome failure and if it’s a success it’s going to be an awesome success so maybe somewhere in the middle.

What can we expect from the setlist tonight?

A mixture from all four, I’m trying to keep it a little heavier I think but also theatrical. We managed to get the screen that goes behind us so we’re going to use the same intro from when we played the O2 a while back [featuring Ziltoid]. We’re going to be using a brand new one at the four shows.

Speaking of Ziltoid what do you feel about the cult status he’s been getting?

It’s understandable I think in a certain way because as you get older there’s just a need for people to have hero worship and it’s one thing to feel that towards a person or a musician but sooner or later the truth’s gonna come out that they’re douchebags like everybody else so with a figure like Ziltoid it doesn’t happen right? He’s an alien! The next plan I’m doing is making a TV program focused around him where I want him to interview bands and things. I think there’s a lot of places to go with the character and I think he’s starting to have a life of his own.

Even when I’m doing video stuff or interviews and I start speaking like him I’m like ‘wow, that’s not me anymore’..

So you’d say he’s a displacement of the time with SYL for example?

I’m definitely projecting a lot into him. It’s cool though because as the interest in Ziltoid grows then the potential with what I can do with him grows as well so I think I’m going to let it gestate for another year and get the puppets and little skits together then when I get around to doing the next Ziltoid thing I’ve got a bunch ready.

There’s Epicloud in the works..

I think that’ll be the next thing but the other night I had this idea for another character in the Ziltoid thing. I really like sloths, they’re kinda like my favourite animal so I thought of making a sloth puppet, a stoner type sloth. I was trying to think of a name for him like Sloth-ra or something…

Sloth-ra works actually!

I had another one but I forget what it was but when the next Ziltoid thing comes out I think it’s going to have a bunch of characters that are going to be unique and have a lot of legs as well. A character with a lot of legs!

A human millipede or something…

Maybe even a billipede with a billion legs! Wait.. more a thousand!

 You could probably have something like say a flying elephant…

Yeah, there’d have to be some angle where he’s afraid of heights or something..

You’re doing  acoustic shows to round off the UK side of this year including my hometown on the last date..

Awesome, where’s your hometown?

 Stoke.

Oh nice! Awesome!

What’s it like working with Dave McPherson as support?

Dave’s great, he’s got a great sense of rhythm and can sing! His rhythm’s intimidating  for me because he was a drummer  and I’m pretty much rhythmically inept! He’s a great dude, a great singer and he’s got a lot of things going on so it’s cool to play with him.

Let’s go into depth with the four albums. Would you say they’re a type of therapy in certain parts such as bits on Deconstruction like Stand and Planet Of The Apes that feel very autobiographical?

I think everything I’ve done has been autobiographical since the first record, circumstances change so quickly that everything that happens is a different story to tell. I’d say all the four records work as one piece and make more sense together than individually but even then they say something that I think is relatively easy to grasp and important to me at least.

The way I see the four- and feel free to agree with me or not – is  a man wanting to combat his demons, exorcising the demons and then finding the inner peace within..

Absolutely and I think the irony of the whole thing is through the exorcism of them I realised specifically at the end of Deconstruction that you can never get rid of them but you can make peace with them and that’s the only way to move forward. There’s a lot of times people revoke their pasts, officially deny that it ever happened like they’re a prostitute – not that I’m drawing a comparison to prostitution- someone that maybe had a harsh past and just refused to acknowledge it.

In some ways that can work but often that leads you to religion and for me it’s more about accepting what I was and what my motivations for doing it was and learning enough about that to not repeat past mistakes. The crux of that and why Ghost is even named Ghost is you have to make peace with those things and accept they’re part of your fabric. Once you do that you can enjoy it instead of being in a constant state of remorse.

It’s like with Stand there’s the line of ‘Some people find Heaven’ and then you’ve got Mikael from Opeth  doing the growl like the voice that resides in the back of the head..

I think what makes that interesting about that too is Mikael stopped growling so there’s that element of it. Everything I write is autobiographical and has angles to it but that being said I’m on autopilot enough of the time that I rarely think enough about it! The pieces fall into place if I’m doing it correctly and in hindsight I can look at the lyrics and go ‘ah that connects to this and this connects to that’.

I think I’m lucky in that’s how I work and very rarely try and organise those things on the surface.

It’s for people to find themselves and make their own interpretations of..

Yeah and if I work enough at it all the pieces generally fall into place on my own front.

What would you say is your greatest/proudest moment?

Proudest moment? The proudest thing in general is that I’m still here and pretty together as a person. I think whatever I end up doing from here on out.. the sky’s the limit to choose my own direction and if it had been that way 2 or 3 years ago  I think I would have probably lost the plot. The fact that I haven’t and have been able to withstand certain temptations that’s a pretty pride inducing for me at this point.

I mean take the Punky Brewster era for example, what would you say that told you?

At that time I’d just got signed to Century Media and I had a bunch of friends that were in heavy metal bands and the thing to do was to become a punk rock band so you had an army of people that were desperate for success that they would take any direction that was thrown at them and change course, I wanted to make it clear my reasons for doing it and that I stick with what I do because it comes naturally.

Rather than following what they want you to do, you’ll do what you want to do..

Exactly, 100 percent.

So finally what’s next for Devin Townsend?

I have no idea, I’ve got like a bunch of ideas, in all honesty as long as it’s progressing it forward it doesn’t matter. If everybody wants Ziltoid I’ll do Ziltoid, if everybody wants a tour I’ll tour. At this point it’s making sure in my world to find peace when I can and whatever the best decision is to be made I’ve got enough people in my world to make that call.

Thank you very much, it’s been a honour and an experience to meet you!

You too, have a good nught!