Devin Townsend

“I'm very creative - making music, making puppets, that's my thing - but mainstream success and the demands that brings? No, not really for me.”

“I think that religion is incredibly cruel, and I think that my biggest problem with being vegetarian, usually, is other vegetarians.”

“'Epicloud' is the first record that I felt confident enough to include all those things on one record, so it goes between melodic hard rock to schizophrenic heavy metal to country to really ambient stuff, and it's all in one place.”

“I spent a great deal of my career willingly ignoring the fact that people are participating in it, because it allows me to function without second-guessing it, without thinking, 'Oh, I wonder what people are gonna think of this,' or, 'I wonder what people aren't gonna think of this.'”

“I think I've been playing bass for as long as I've played guitar, and I love them both.”

“I've been a workaholic for many years, but at the same time, I do it because I love it.”

“I like it when it rains; I like it when it snows. I like seasons. I like trees. I like mountains. I like rivers. And with that around me, I write.”

“The album 'Physicist,' I erased all the work that I had done halfway through. I think that's probably why that contributed to that album being sort of sub-par for me, just because by the time I had to go back and do it, I was just over it.”

“I love Strapping Young Lad. I'm incredibly proud of that band; I'm incredibly proud of everything we did.”

“Enya was a huge deal for me. That kind of woman vocals and how wide those productions were.”

“With 'Epicloud,' I wanted something catchy as the flu but with a sentiment that is romantic, positive, and beautiful. Spiritual without religion and set to heavy music.”

“I have, like, three or four friends and am a very private person.”

“If there's anybody who's new to what I do, who maybe heard 'Liberation' or some of the songs off 'Epicloud' and thought, 'This is really cool, I could get into this,' you're going to hate 'Casualties.'”

“When I make music, I tend to make music that are really over the top.”

“The bottom line is music, for me, is an exhaust port for life, and if I have a chaotic year, then I'm gonna write a chaotic record, and that's what happened with 'Ziltoid,' with 'Z2.'”

“Strapping Young Lad is a vehicle for me to be wild and extroverted and ridiculous. It gives me the chance to say, 'Look at me. I'm a heavy metal guy. I'm Rob Halford or Bruce Dickinson or whoever.'”

“I play keyboards and Pro Tools, if you want to look at it as an instrument.”

“I have a job - it's a great job, and I love doing it - but I can't not work. That's not psychological; that's practical.”

“As a drummer, I'm rhythmically so disabled that it's hilarious.”

“There is no way I'll ever write an album for Avril Lavigne or Christina Aguilera. I just couldn't do it. There is no way I could ever do it because my musical process is about being directly involved with whatever I'm going through in life.”