Devin Townsend Project - By a Thread: Live in London 2011 (2012)

For something that's supposedly hanging on by a thread, it's surprisingly well-knit. Is that a clever intro? Nice wordplay with the album title? Gives a bit of a summary on how I feel about the album, too, didn't it? God, I'm fucking incredible. Sure, I would've been fully justified in saying "the smartest man alive" instead, but I'm too humble. In the words of a good friend of mine: "I bought two plane tickets: One for me, and one for my dick. I'm a really fucking humble guy."

A multi-disc live album consisting of Devin Townsend, night after night, playing a different Devin Townsend Project album in full, along with other special little goodies. What's really incredible is that despite the songs being complicated and technical as fuck at some points, Devin and crew managed to pull EVERY SINGLE FUCKIN' SONG without any problems! I suppose that's massively helped by the fact that they used backing tracks for a lot of the shit, which I can forgive, especially in the case of "Addicted" (which is probably the best performance, it sounds hype as fuck!!) but it does come across as a bit awkward in your headphones to pick out the bits that were clearly backing tracks, which, by all means, SHOULD be there because the live performances would be shitty without the added flair of the keyboards, industrial bits, etc, but y'know, it's one of those "you have to be there" things I guess. Other than that, I can't think of a real reason to pick any of these over the original albums, given that a lot of Devin's signature production work is obviously lost in a live recording, but I can honestly say that the only faults you'll probably find with this multi-disc live album are the exact same that you'd have with the studio versions, and these songs, brickwall-production or not, are still fucking incredible, and the fact that he tears through additional songs not from any of those four initial DTP albums is a great bonus. Devin and crew are fucking majestic at pulling off these epic tunes, and the entire thing just feels like a victory lap for Devin Townsend, as if to say "Yeah, I'm off drugs, but I just did these four albums, so suck my fucking dick." so fuck yeah, Devy. You do you, booboo.

8/10
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