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Devin Townsend - Trivia


In an interview in the Dutch rock & metal magazine Aardschok Devin was asked if Z² was his answer to Pink Floyds "The Wall". He answered that the album would rather be an answer to Star Wars, but then with childish humor.
"Ziltoid the Omniscient" is the name of a crater of Mars, located at 40.62° N, 359.62° E. The suggestion was submitted by Conor Jennings on 27/02/14 to Uwingu - an organisation which funds "space researchers, educators, and projects" by creating ways in which people can "personally connect with space exploration and astronomy" - and was approved the same day.

The citation on the certificate reads: "Modular forms and elliptic curves! Infinite fire revolving around infinite parallels fractals of infinite reality, each cascading, gliding in an infinite wheel. Tell me the true nature of my reality! Indeeeeeed... Yesssssss..."
In a interview in 2012 Devin told he is a vegetarian. When asked if he considers himself to be a vegetarian activist, Devin replied, "No. In fact, I'm the opposite of that, I think. I find that people who are active about such things run the risk of preaching, and I have no religious interests whatsoever. I think that religion is incredibly cruel, and I think that my biggest problem with being vegetarian, usually, is other vegetarians. Because I find, a lot of times, humans in general are? life isn't easy for anybody, so a lot of people are doing what they can do in order to get by. And I think that when somebody actively tries to convince other people that what they're doing in their life is not as relevant as what they're doing in their life, it's in my mind very similar to religion ? it's like, 'Because you're not like me, you're wrong.'"

Read the full interview here.
Back when Townsend was singing for Steve Vai on The Jay Leno Show, he went into Leno's office and wiped his ass with his phone. The next day, Townsend got a call saying that his prank was caught on a hidden camera and as a result was threatened with a lawsuit.
In Planet of the Apes, off of Deconstruction, Townsend originally had a part where the choir would have to sing tongue twisters simply to piss them off. This annoyed the choir to the point where they wouldn't do it.
All of Ziltoid The Omniscient has been made ready to play on the popular rhythm game "Rock Band". However, Ziltoid will consistently make fun of the player during parts of certain songs, as well as calling said player such insults as "Nerds!" and telling them to play the real guitar.
Devin Townsend is the inspiration for Pickles, drummer of the Adult Swim cartoon band Dethklok. Brendan Small however added a goatee and a comb-over to Pickles' design in order to avoid looking too much like Townsend.
The name "Juular", off of Deconstruction, is a misspelling of the word Jugular. Devin thought it was a cool name and kept it in the final product.
Devin Townsend was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. He explains that during the writing/recording process of the Strapping Young Lad album Alien he stopped taking medication in an attempt to create a more "extreme" sound, and that the album Synchestra was about returning to the healthy state of mind after recording Alien.
Townsend's trademark production style, featuring a heavily multitracked wall of sound, has been compared to the styles of Phil Spector and Frank Zappa. His versatile vocal delivery ranges from screaming to an opera-esque singing, and his songwriting is similarly diverse. Townsend's musical style is rooted in metal, and his albums are written to express different aspects of his personality.
After performing in a number of metal bands in high school, Townsend was discovered by a record label in 1993 and was asked to perform lead vocals on Steve Vai's album Sex & Religion. After recording and touring with Vai, Townsend was discouraged by what he found in the music industry, and vented his anger on a solo album released under the pseudonym Strapping Young Lad.
In 2007, Devin Townsend appeared as an announcer on an MTV commercial announcing a new season of the reality show "The Osbournes". The commerical can be watched here.
The lyrics "Sooner or later / The nights with the satyr / Will bring back the memories leaving you money and time" appear both in the Devin Townsend song "Color Your World" and the Strapping Young Lad song "Wrong Side"
The song "Ain't Never Gonna Win..." on the album "Ki" was actually a live jam track.