Album Review: Devin Townsend - PowerNerd
Reviewed by Dan Phipps
Since the dismantling of the Devin Townsend Project back in 2019 and the release of the absolutely phenomenal Empath record Devin has continuously been crafting bringing his fan base completely new experiences with his releases since. Two years after Lightwork which saw Devin bring in external sources to help craft the final sound of the album which lead to in my opinion another superb record PowerNerd is ready to be unleashed. PowerNerd is a record which was composed in a mere eleven days which was announced with the release of the self titled single which again gave fans a sense that this new record would follow suit and be a totally different path.
The aforementioned track opens the record, its a big catchy very traditional hard rock track with an extremely anthemic style chorus and it really does get you excited for what comes ahead and will get you singing at the top of your lungs and gets the album heading in the right direction. The theme of big catchy songs is definitely the focus point on PowerNerd, tracks such as Knuckle dragger, Glacier and the album's closing track Ruby Quaker for example are all great catchy tracks but in slightly different ways compositionally.
So it's safe to say that Devin hits the mark on making the songs memorable and extremely fun and PowerNerd gives the listener the ability to sing along all over the albums run length. As expected the overall sound and feel of this album are superbly crafted giving you some really thick full sounding tracks at the more epic parts of the album and maintaining the softer more melodic parts when used. Devin's voice is especially on point, which leads to the catchiness of the songs.
The progression that Devin has done in moving from the beloved Devin Townsend Project name and rebranding back under Devin Townsend has seen him now offer up three fantastic records. PowerNerd ticks all the right boxes and is a collection of great, catchy tracks and continues in my mind to prove that moving onto this new venture was a risky move which has definitely paid off.
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