Managed to get a copy of this yesterday, after much faffing around. Who'd have thought it'd be harder to find a copy of the new Devin Townsend album in one of the biggest cities in Canada, than it is in a city of 150K people in Scotland? Certainly not me! Note to self, sauntering down to HMV or the like on release day is a recipe for disappointment in North America. I can see why so many people had such a big boner about preordering things, even before the days of preorder bonuses.
Really enjoying it so far. Physicist was actually one of my favourite Devin albums, and there are a lot of parallels here. Being crap at picking out lyrics, and not knowing the context of the album at the time, Physicist came across to me the way that Epicloud is apparently intended to me. Really positive, heavy music. (That said, a lot of SYL makes me feel the same way, because I don't tend to listen to heavy music to get angry, even if it was written as an expression of anger)
Grace is the business. I'm a sucker for Meshuggah style riffing, and the epic choir reminds me a lot of what made me love Rain on the first SYL album. The lack of lyrics doesn't bother me all that much, Devoid from Physicist is one of my favourite Devin Townsend songs, and it's not exactly bursting with lyrics. The Kingdom remake is interesting. A lot stronger in many places (vocals especially), but missing some of the things I loved about the original (like the way "I'm fine" is cut together in the background in such a way that it seems to go on forever) still good though. Love "where we belong", actually been listening to that one for the past few months from that youtube video that it's superimposed on.
Really like the autotuned Anneke vocals in places too (like the start of True North), reminds me of cheesy electronic music, in a good way. Not much of a fan of Lucky Animals, but it's catchy.
Liked some tracks on Epiclouder, but couldn't tell you which ones they are, as I've not had a proper chance to take it in yet.
