### Strapping Young Lad: For those aboot to rock (DVD)

#### 18/09/08 || theProphet

I take it that most of you people know of SYL, but if you don’t, I’m going to give you a briefing. Strapping Young Lad is the brainchild of metal mastermind Devin Townsend, a band which over the period of 1995-2006 put out 6 albums, all of which were great and at least two were amazing. However, in 2007 the band was put on an “extended hiatus” and later disbanded. Many bitter tears have I wept because of this, because I neglected to see their show in Copenhagen shortly before, thinking that I’d have many opportunities to see them live in the future. However, now I, and many others, will never get to experience SYL’s sonic onslaught live, but we must not despair, for at least they had the good taste to release a live DVD back in 2004. Enter “For Those Aboot to Rock”.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Strapping Young Lad is able to put on a spectacular fucking show. Every bandmember is completely balls out uncompromising onstage: Gene Hoglan is a fucking monster, for example. Seriously, what he pulls of on this disc is nothing short of amazing and to watch him doing without even breaking a sweat is reason enough to buy this disc. Byron Stroud handles that bas with extreme skill as well, laying down complex, thundering basslines while headbanging ferociously. Jed Simon shows off with some great leads as if the SYL riffage wasn’t already complicated enough, and then there’s this guy on keyboards who you don’t really care about, but he’s a capable musician, doing a great job fleshing out the sound while maniacally banging his head.

Excellent performances all around, but it’s a fucking fact that SYL would be nothing without its frontman. The one and only Hevy Fucking Devy. Vocally, his performance is simply untouchable, the screams, the growls, the clean singing, everything’s absolutely flawless. As for the guitar, Devin also plays some slick leads and displays a breathtaking array of heavy metal poses and stances. Furthermore, his stage persona is outrageously tongue-in-cheek and his presentations of the songs are small nuggets of comedic gold. At times you laugh out loud, such as when he in the middle of a song screams “I suck dicks for crack money!!!” at the audience. Also, watching him rock out with a big ol’ fucking cowboy hat is not easily forgettable. One of the best showmen in the business.

The sound on “FTAtR” is absolutely mind blowing. This might just as well have been a studio recording and my guess is that the live sound has been polished quite a bit. Still, even if the sound doesn’t have that “live” aspect, I wouldn’t change it because why would I want my DVD to be sounding worse? I know it’s live, I’m watching the fucking thing for chrissake!

The setlist spans over SYL’s first three albums, “Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing”, the almighty “City” and “SYL”, and there really isn’t a bad song on here, though I wouldn’t have said no to some songs from the 2005 release, “Alien”. As for highlights, we get “Relentless”, “Devour”, “Aftermath” and “Detox” to name but a few. The absolute gem of this concert however is the closer, “Far Beyond Metal”. When presenting the song, Devin asks if there’s anyone in the audience who wants to sing the chorus, and this guy, “Drew” gets onstage to meet this task. Suffice to say that anybody who has heard the song knows why this epic performance is completely unforgettable.

The DVD also contains some music videos and interviews and whatnot, and allegedly nekkid cheerleaders, but the latter appears to be a cunning marketing scam, ‘cause I sure as hell haven’t found ‘em. The other stuff is not exactly something that you’ll watch over and over, but at least it doesn’t make things worse.

Right, yet another fantastic music DVD, this is extreme metal at its finest. The crème de la crème, the shiznits, the “it”, the stuff of legends and so on. You must own this, for ‘tis as essential as brains in a zombie’s diet. This shit’s what it’s all aboot…sorry, about.

Blame Canada!

8 skullets out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2004
- Label: Century Media
- Website: www.strappingyounglad.com
- Band
- Devin Townsend: vocals, guitars and skullet
- Jed Simon: guitars
- Munesh Sami: keyboards
- Byron Stroud: bass
- Gene Hoglan: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Dire (Intro)
- 02. Consequence
- 03. Relentless
- 04. Rape Song
- 05. Home Nucleonics
- 06. S.Y.L.
- 07. In the Rainy Season
- 08. Devour
- 09. Aftermath
- 10. Oh My Fucking God
- 11. Force Fed
- 12. Detox
- 13. All Hail the New Flesh
- 14. Far Beyond Metal