Vocal Coach/Opera Singer REACTION to Devin Townsend "Deadhead" 

Does anyone have any theories about why Devin switches from this clean warm singing tone to super nasal at the start of the song? Come at me with your lyrical analysis, people!

You should check out "Devin Townsend performs 'Kingdom' for EMGtv". Not only great vocals, but a great showman.

The bit where he tells the audience to "pick a tempo" cracks me up every time.

Fun fact, Devin was still getting over a flu when this show was recorded. The dude has such good control on his singing.

This particular song and video always feels like a religious experience for me. The wall of sound, the vocals, those massive screens behind them, it's almost overwhelming. Kingdom is going to be a popular suggestion but I also recommend checking out his song "Why?"

i was there for this one, it was 2.5 hours into the 3 hour set, and he had cold!!! man is a machine.

This is one of the rare cases where the live version of the song is heads and tails above the studio version. I might argue that this is one of the best live recordings in the history of live recordings depending on the parameters you're using to judge. This is an excellent example of a "perfect storm" when the natural qualities of the venue you are playing in is paired with the technical knowledge and experience of the engineers. It is quite literally flawless imo.

With watery eyes and breathlessness, It's good to see that I am not the only one who reacts this way when listening to Devin. Good job : )

Devin has Synesthesia. He couldn’t read music, but instead saw it as colours. I said couldn’t because he more recently did work with an orchestra and had to learn to read music because he couldn’t say “let’s play that yellow note……”

This was a massive show, Devin performed his album Ziltoid in full with himself and the band all kitted out in costumes/themed clothes & this was the 2nd part of the show which was his greatest hits kinda thing & they're all dressed casual. Lucky, lucky people that were there!

Love your videos and reactions, thank you for creating content

Listen to him sing a "Disney song" he wrote, called "Why". This man is the most talented musician in the entire rock/metal scene.

So good to see you on RU-vid again! This is a great introduction to Townsend. He's so playful and engaging on stage. A more intimate -- but no less powerful -- showcase of Devin's talent is the live studio version of "Kingdom". I highly encourage giving that a look and/or a reaction. It's fantastic. And again, good to see you again!

I love the moment at about 14:35 where there's the realisation he isnt just screaming but has solid pitch control even with that much distortion. Absolute master vocalist.

Possibly the most talented Canadian musical artist ever, that virtually no Canadians have ever heard of…

A point rarely mentioned about Devin: his interpretation. Its not the lyrics by themselves, "will you save me, pain" are not really a very deep lyrical moment, but the WAY that he "sings" that, the way that he interprets and probably relives the feelings associated with those lyrics, are 80% of Devin's impact on people. As can be noticed by your suddenly serious face, the involuntary swallow and the close to tears in your eyes.

It's always great to watch someone listen to Devin for the first time. This song is brilliant, I mean the intro is great but the rest of the song has this grinding power to it, along with that beautiful towering voice! I have to say tho that this is just the tip of the iceberg, so much more awesomeness from Devin for you to discover

Love seeing new reactions to Devy. As for the quiet chanting in the middle of the song, it repeats "It's on again, (got no wings... gossamer wings...) on again..." As far as why he chooses the vocal tones he does, one of the best theories I read on the lyrics, is that it tells the story of him, being bipolar, and his relationship with his wife and how they deal with it. Whether that's true or not who knows, but it seems to fit I think, with the way the song ebbs and flows from dark and tumultuous to brighter tones. Enjoyed your reaction! And welcome to the wild world of Devin lol

If you go back to Devin on this channel eventually, one set of songs that are not recommended enough but that forms a truly magical experience is the combo Funeral/Bastard/Death Of Music from that same live show at Royal Albert Hall. The lyrics are crushing and the experience is so deeply moving to me, and there's once again there some mind-blowing vocals from Devin... It's three songs so it's a bit long but it's well worth it

He was just here in Australia! Such an incredible performer with a huge range of work - can’t really go wrong with any of the already mentioned suggestions!!

Devin Townsend is the best metal/progressive/alternative singer/guitarist/artist in the world imo.

Wow, i was waiting for your video so long time because i know it is worth to wait. Your explanation is so interesting for me. Thanks!

I was fortunate enough to be at the Royal Albert Hall at this concert, superb and never tire of Deadhead, one of many superb tracks from Devin.. Eclectic mix of musical masterpiece ❤

Wonderful reaction. Such a unique talent, and I'm glad you appreciated it with us!

I'd say that Devin's ability to control his distortion is his greatest strength. "A million micro-shifts" was dead on. It's not just on or off, there are an infinite number of different possible intensities and mixtures.

This was such a pleasure. You have to explore his catalog. There will be things that bring tears of joy and intense emotion. If you hear something you don't like - there is so much that you will fall in love with. His modern music is written around his glorious voice, and his operatic tenor and falsetto are featured more often. There's a lot more than screaming and heavy music. I would love to see more Dev reactions and critiques. Cheers!!

Please listen to his live performance of "The Death of Music". Spectacular vocals and its from this sane concert too. 🎶

Glad you enjoyed checking out Devin! For a completely different side of him as a vocalist, check out his live solo acoustic cover of "Bring Him Home" from Les Mis. It's exceptional.

i teared up at the end, just like you did.

you should check out his tribute to Disney 'Why?'

What an excellent reaction, you will love "kingdom", a video studio from EMGTV

You have to do Grace with Devin Townsend and Anneke!!

Yes! More! More Devin please!!!!

Great reaction. Devin is a bit of a musical savant. He has zero voice training and just figured out on his own how to produce all those different vocal colours. He also is known for his "wall of sound' style of composition, which you picked up on. I'm not an expert per se, but I can try and help explain what Devin is doing with his harsh vocals. Devin's harsh vocals are mainly produced using fry scream technique where the true vocal folds are held closed (but not phonating) to pressurize the air stream, allowing it to rattle tissues higher up in the vocal tract. Fry screams produce those distinct static-y overtones and usually sound much 'higher' than false cord screams/growls (which are done with the true folds held open, creating a much larger resonant space). Devin also uses vocal distortion on his clean singing sometimes, where the false folds pick up some of the air pressure from the true folds while they are phonating. This is why Devin often uses distorted singing as a transition between clean singing and his pure fry scream, because the techniques for distortion and fry screaming are sort of related. You were right to not just try to imitate him off the cuff. It's much easier to hurt your voice fry screaming improperly than with false cord growling. Finally, there are a lot of metal singers today who have big vocal toolkits and who use the wide array of tones they can produce for storytelling. It's something Devin, Floor Jansen, Tatiana from Jinjer (who uses a lot more colours in other songs you haven't heard yet), Courtney Laplante (from Spiritbox) and many other metal singers share in common. A few others you might find interesting are Brittney Slayes from Unleash the Archers (Tonight We Ride shows off her insane range, power and super high belting abilities), Cristina Scabbia from Lacuna Coil (Swamped live from the 119 show is a great introduction to her voice), and Marcela Bovio of Stream of Passion (Out in the Real World live is a good intro for her).

He is so good at that... yes... that sums up Devin in a nutshell! He is so unique and gifted and a wonderful human being, too!

14:22 onward always gives me chills every single time I hear this song. His range is incredible, and the sound mix for that performance was perfect.

Analysis good. Devin do scream good. Good Cristina.

His discography is extremely diverse. This is my favorite song, but some others worth checking out to sample a bit of variety: - Ih Ah (duet with Anneke Van Giersbergen, another artist I heartily recommend checking out if you haven't heard her before) - Why? (some call it the disney song. do check out the london live performance one). - Juular (He meant to write Jugular, but got a typo, and he thought it sounded like a fun name for a religious extremist so he wrote a song about that. wild music video. features Ihsahn). - Spirits Will Collide (Kinda jubilant song, very wholesome and cool music video). - Moonpeople (One of his newer songs, quite soft and pop-y) - Kingdom (Perhaps his most impressive vocal performance?) - Detox (From his Strapping Young Lad days, when he screamed until his throat started bleeding. very aggressive music). - Vampira (Excellent halloween content. Greatest music video ever made. showcases a lot of his whimsy while still good musically) - March of the Poozers (Just... just watch the live performance one in London, same set as this one i believe. best intro point to the whole ziltoid saga probably). - Genesis (Because why try to confine a song to one or even just a few genres?)

C: "I'm not a guitarist" .... I just have a PRS hanging on the wall... as art. C: ":Devin. He Good. Good. Devin" Me: "Dying... I am... Laughing. Dying" Devin is a gift from a mischievous deity... we are met to ponder and perplex over what-and-how he does it, all while thoroughly enjoying the content and flow of his music. Devin is a very strong flavonoid (he would object if I called him a drug) which is best taken when you have an entire afternoon to digest the content... it takes time for the palate to clear after a heavy dose of Devi. I love his screams, but I think I like his cleans better... which astounds me. Usually the doctoral level head-n-neck physiology nerd in me works to grasp the upper-resp-tract machinations that a metal singer is using. In Devin's case, I just envision a vocal-character-artist who has great pitch and can fry on top of anything. But his cleans are absolutely fog-and-fire piercing in quality and support.... the kind of voice that teen-age-me used to pierce the tumult of a forest-fire-fighting line, back in the 70's... ah, to be young and indestructible again. Good to meet you. Enjoy your passage through the world of metal singers. - - Blind Doc Jones

Fantastic reaction, Cristina. This performance of "Deadhead" is from the second half of a concert. The first half was an entire concept/story album called "Ziltoid". He had about another 10 songs on the set list after "Deadhead". He's just a very powerful singer. Also, a heck of a nice guy. I recommend checking out his song "Why", either his live from "Order of Magnitude" or the Quarantine version. Both are great, the quarantine version is just him so you can see more of what he's doing, but the other is before an audience and you can see his audience interaction.

Thanks for leaving the "guitar" part in. Shows character and we have so few floating around the interweb these days. Good stuff - genuine.

The one thing i love about vocal reacts to DT is that as a DT fan we know what's coming and to watch people react to his incredible high note range always makes me smile

I'm not like huge into his music catalog, so I don't know a whole lot, but every single thing I've seen and listened to from Devin just shows he's an incredible showman and just has an astonishing command of his voice

Devvy is one of the most limitless, astonishing and utterly stunning vocalists I have ever had the fortune to hear. From Vai throu Strapping Young Lad to eveything else, just never a dull moment. Love watching people discover him, jaws dropped in awe like "how is this possible? Why have I never heard of him?"

Watching Dev live is a religious expierence and his vocals are always on point. With all the years singing in SYL his voice was getting wrecked and then he started taking better care of it... and that is why he can sing so cleans and so hard. Amazing technique and control. This live version of this song is unrivalled... just immense

Based on his own words, Devin gets an idea of the sound/colors (he's syneshetic) he wants and then figures out how to get there, both with his vocals and instrumentations. He's had little formal vocal education, most of what he does self-admittedly, comes from trying to achieve the desired sound till it hurt, at which point he'd stop and try another way. So this switch is likely a product of his personal acquired style and methods.... He actually has even more power in his cleans than what he shows here - if you checked out the album version of Kingdom (from Epicloud), or a YT video of him doing Bring Him Home from Les Mis, you'd see more of that part of his range. He's an amazing listen and since he keeps doing different things that interest him, there' awesomeness in his catalog for many different tastes, beyond metal.

I saw him play this live in Cardiff in 2019 and I cried my eyes out. What a damn trip his set is

Loved your reaction to this song! What an awesome vocal range, and as agile as a top level gymnast. My opinion on why he switches so abruptly, from operatic to high pitched growl/scream in this song, is that he is conveying precisely the emotions at that breaking point in a disagreement between loved ones, where shit turns nasty from both players, and all bets are off. We have all been in that moment, when someone we are deeply in love with goes beyond reason, and shit turns real effing ugly, (vice-versa)!

Touring Australia in a minute too, miss it and hate yourself for decades, seriously.

I'm not sure which city you are based in @cristinarusso, but he is in Australia between the 8th and 12th of November. I just booked a ticket to Melbourne on Nov 10th today.

Fun Fact about this performance. He was coming of a/still in the middle of a cold.

"Wall of Sound" That's a pretty accurate description of his music and he is well known for it.

11:10. Punking his own audience for their horrendously out of time clapping……. and they love it!

"I have never heard any Devin Townsend before .." .. This is going to be good!

Actually saw Devin live at a music festival at a farm in the UK. Booked flights from NZ to watch two of my fav bands Igorrr and Heilung. Devin was announced as a headliner much closer to the event, so I was pretty chuffed. He is such an entertainer and very funny live.

Another GREAT, in playing and singing too ❤💪

Look up Townsend doing Kingdom, it will absolutely blow your mind.

Great reaction, but I want to add especially that I really appreciate the little extras in the end where mr. side-camera guy adds information and informs you. It's cooler seeing the intake and processing of wee titbits of information. Do keep that up! And I do hope you will keep the videos going; your reactions are really enjoyable. :)

New follower! The Mad Genius...welcome!! (Can't wait to see which of his library you do next...do enjoy!)

He's an INSANE guitar player, too. He did a recent interview where he melted the faces off Rick beane as well as John petrucci and tosin abasi and he blew them all away. I didn't even know he was a good singer.

9:44 I learned today that Devin good, scream good. Welcome for watching.

Welcome to the rabbit hole that is Devin. This entire concert is absolutely worth a listen from start to finish - the first half is the Ziltoid concept album, which is practically theatre, then the second half is a 'best of' as requested by the fans. What makes it even more impressive is a) the length of the concert, and b) Dev was quite ill at this point, yet still pulled it out of the bag for hours on end. Once you've backtracked through all Devin's solo stuff, then you can get into the chaos that is Strapping Young Lad as well.

From hearing this on a random stream, to shazam-ing it, then overlistening it for days, and then finding your video of your caring and guiding opinion...can only bring me tears of joy. What a unique experience in a world where people think they heard and seen it all

Great reaction and analysis, Cristina. Love it! ❤

Devin Townsend is my spirit animal

funeral, bastard and death of music....the trilogy....also at royal albert hall...you won't regret it!

So glad you’re back! And boy what a great reaction to return with!!! Keep it up please! 🙏

12:41 The words for the "chant" there is "Got no wings, gossamer wings".

Devy is a unique amazing artist, musician, artiste, lyricist par excellence. His cross genre appeal is unreal.... Check out Ziltoid the Omniscient, War Grace and of course the seminal "live at plovdiv" Welcome to the Devy rabbit hole 👍👍👍👍

The transformation from his old band Strapping Young Lad to this is mind blowing.

The Vocals sang during the breakdown are "Got no wings, Gossamer wings" Also as others have said the reason for his nasal thing here is because he was quite ill. There are many other cleaner performances of this song vocally but the fact that this was at the royal albert hall, and he still managed this performance makes it arguably more epic.

So good to see you back on the interwebs!. This is very restrained for Heavy Devy. If you want to hear more of his range, try "Bring on the young" from his Strapping Young Lad days. Y'know: the usual operatic to growls to screams across five octaves type of thing. Also, The Death of Music from this same concert is simply staggering.

You need to watch his live performance of Kingdom (the EMG one). The transition from operatic to scream is breathtaking

Devin scream good 😂

Highly recommend checking out Devin's rendition of Bring Him Home. It's absolutely incredible.

I'm a bit late to this, but in case you hadn't read this in other comments yet, this was from his Royal Albert Hall show in April 2015. The show had 2 parts to it: the first part was a playthrough of one of his newest albums at the time, and they were dressed up much more in character for that part. This song came from the second half, which was a "by request" setlist as voted on by fans online. He comments on the DVD that for this part of the show, he told the band to just wear whatever they're comfortable in, hence the band t-shirts and him wearing a hoodie, be cause it was the chill and fun part of the show for the fans.

Devin Garrett Townsend is a 51yr Old Canadian madman who sometimes likes to make music. He is Bipolar and has synesthesia (he sees musical notes as colors and shapes). He is a reluctant singer but he can sing and has range over 5 octaves and 3 notes (C2 to F#7). In his youth a voice teacher told him his technique is wrong and he will lose his voice if he keeps singing like that. He has since put out at least 27 studio albums, half a dozen live albums across wildly different genres from Extreme metal to Country/Gospel to ambient, new-age electronica etc. I won't ask for a reaction but instead I'd like you to watch his podcast interview with Elizabeth Zharoff. It's slightly on the longer side but a must listen if you wish to explore his vast musical output. He goes on to explain his struggles with substance abuse, mental health, physical health, his unorthodox singing techniques etc.

G'day Oz, Devin has an incredible and broad catalog. It's worth a look.

Godly singing ....outofworld voice....

He gave her an eargasm

Devin's the best. Glad you enjoyed it!

That whole concert is an awesome experience. Devin is all around amazing.

Devin Townsend's performance on Why is something you have to listen to

Not one single female vocal coach has passed the Devin Townsend test. He is flawless in his victories. I get a kick out of seeing how he can absolutely dazzle women and men alike. Literally putting them into a trance 14:44. pause here 0:23 and here 17:07 and just look at the emotional effect his energy has. It's just incredible. I would love to be able to do this myself.

Excellent reaction! I love how every vocalist who listens to Devin's work sees/hears something different. What a treasure. If you're exploring metal vocalists, you NEED to experience Ronnie James Dio in Stargazer, by Rainbow. Absolutely soaring and magical. Thank you for your work and for sharing!

So many things, great things, amazing things, can be said about Devon as a musician. One that really stands out with this song is how he's able to get discernible pitch and melody out of his screams. Try watching his EMG TV performance of Kingdom that really puts his vocals front and center over the instruments.

I remember someone saying he was not feeling well. I can't remember if it was a cold or if he had laryngitis a few days before. It was a comment from another react ion video.

So much emotion in his voice, and face. The way he fluidly moves from texture to texture over time is something unique to him, and really drives home the emotional content of his lyrics. He really does paint pictures with his voice.

I've always loved the song 'Numbered' by Devin Townsend, there's a video on RU-vid of him doing it live, and at the time he had a guest vocalist on a few records called Anneke van Giersbergen. The story is that Anneke's band and Devin's band were on the same record label, and Devin was simply fascinated by not only the purity, but the power of her voice. She was the fan girl of him, and he was the infatuated mega star, blown away by her talent. It was a great time for music!

inb4 Cristina comes out with a metal album

Took boy #2 (he was upper teens) to Devin Townsend. He took home a shirt "lower mid tier Prog Metal" shirt from the show.

His vocals performances are just a pleasure to watch. Love Devinn just seems like a cool guy. In addition to his breathtaking vocals, 😜he is playing the guitar at the same time. While his guitar parts are not very hard to play, it's crazy to achieve those vocals and coordinate anything else, let alone playing cords on a guitar, in time, with a band. WTF! Hope he comes to Boston soon.

OMG you were gone for so long and seeing you back with one of my favorite song ever is a gift ahah Deadhead, and especially this performance, is what got me into Devin, I can't not have goosebumps when listening to this video

Devin is a mad genius

Wait till you see his live performance of kindom.

You had me laughing so much with this reaction that I had to subscribe! Great video

He's only 5'9" supposedly, but he's still a giant! He's incredible at guitar, vocals, writing, and arranging.

I'd also suggest you to hear the studio version of this, I think the "You are so vicious (...)" line is even more impressive as he doesn't stop while transitioning from cleans to harshes

I would recommend watching his song Why, perhaps from the live concert in London. It highlights a greater variety of his singing talent plus his humor.

One of the best concerts you can go to is a Devy concert. Not only is he musically brilliant, but he's damn funny to boot