Devin Townsend - Project EKO (2003)

"Project EKO" as a name sounds like a shitty Dreamcast game your older brother played at a friend's house back in the 1990s. Did you know that you could watch porn on your Dreamcast?? Legit. Even if I walked in on someone masturbating to porn on their Dreamcast, it still wouldn't be as embarrassing as walking in on someone watching porn on a Nintendo 3DS. Disgusting, inhumane, and borderline psychopathic.

I love me some Hevy McMotherfucking Devy, my man. In 2011, I leeched onto him like.. Well, a leech, after Mike Patton's music temporarily got ruined for me (via association with certain other people, don't ask, it was stupid) and just like Mike Patton, Devin Townsend can't help but get his toes wet in a fair bit of everything. On this EP, Devin Townsend finds himself meddling in a bit of electronic and ambient music for the sole reason of "Fuck it, I can" and I think that's pretty admirable, but ultimately, a lot of the music on here comes across as not as properly fleshed-out as his normal music, even if "Assignable" is pretty catchy, and kinda sounds like stock music that you'd hear in the background of a video on YouTube where the dude shows you how to fix an error involving connecting to Xbox Live. Not only just that, but his desktop wallpaper is set to an ANIME GIRL! WITH HUGE ANIME TITTIES!! AND EVEN FUCKIN' BIGGER EYES!!! Sweet mother of God, those eyes.. Where was I? Ah, yes, only essential for the diehard Hevy Devy fans, and even then, they probably won't get a terrible lot of mileage out of this, no matter how cool the concept of our favorite balding/bald (depending on the era, y'know) guitarist/vocalist/evil mastermind tackling electronic music is. Now.. If he could fully flesh out the tunes for an electronic Devin Townsend Project album, sign me up.

6/10