Anyone familiar with Devin Townsend already knows that moderation has rarely been central to his work. Even by his standards, however, Empath is overwhelming: symphonic metal, Broadway theatricality, industrial aggression, choral writing, ambient passages, progressive rock, jazz, death metal and pop melodies occupy the same enormous sonic space.
The abundance is both the album's achievement and its problem. Townsend appears to have treated every musical possibility as worth pursuing, sometimes within the same song. The production piles voices, guitars, orchestras, synthesizers and percussion into arrangements so dense that individual ideas can disappear before the listener has fully registered them.
"Genesis" functions almost as a manifesto. A bright electronic pulse gives way to choir, crushing guitars, orchestral flourishes and frantic metal passages, with abrupt changes arriving before the preceding idea has had time to settle. The musical imagination involved is extraordinary. The difficulty is that Townsend's instinct is almost always to add another possibility rather than examine the one already in front of him.
Even "Borderlands", superficially one of the gentler pieces, refuses simplicity. A melodic core is repeatedly surrounded, distorted and interrupted until the song resembles an architectural collage whose original floor plan remains visible somewhere underneath. Townsend can make a beautiful melody sound as though several different realities are competing for control of it.
The record is most convincing when that scale is attached to a strong emotional center. "Spirits Will Collide" has the dimensions of an arena anthem, but its melody is direct enough to carry the enormous production. "Why?" turns orchestral waltz into something resembling operetta before Townsend moves from theatrical singing into harsher vocal territory. The transitions are extravagant, yet the composition remains legible.
"Singularity" takes the entire method to its logical conclusion over more than 20 minutes. Ambient passages, acoustic music, jazz-inflected sections, towering vocal arrangements, brutal riffs and near-cacophony appear in succession. It is less a conventional closing song than a condensed map of Townsend's musical imagination.
There is a useful comparison with the Claypool Lennon Delirium's South of Reality, another record stuffed with ideas and abrupt stylistic movement. Where that album frequently knows when to let an idea breathe, Townsend tends to keep building. The resulting pressure is exhilarating until it becomes exhausting.
Empath would probably lose part of its identity if somebody imposed strict discipline on it. The excess is the point. Still, there are moments when its most beautiful melodies and most inventive arrangements struggle beneath the sheer quantity of information. It is an ambitious, difficult and frequently brilliant record whose imperfections come from the same impulse as its finest moments: Devin Townsend hearing ten possibilities where most musicians would have heard one.
GENRE: Progressive Metal
RELEASE DATE: March 29, 2019
PRODUCED BY: Devin Townsend
LABEL: HevyDevy Records / InsideOutMusic
RATING: 7/10