Devin Townsend's contribution to metal is monumental, specifically his work in Strapping Young Lad. The band existed from 1994 to 2007 with a hiatus in there between 1998 and 2002, though 11 years later people still practically beg him to get the band back together. Townsend has said about a billion times at this point that Strapping Young Lad is a snapshot of a portion of his life, but he has no interest in doing it again.
He's hinted at getting heavier recently and even said his coming Empath album would be heavier. Though on the whole, Townsend says to RSPTV that he really just doesn't see a major calling to metal anymore in his life.
"In terms of my relationship to metal, I'm still a fan. I'm just old now, and it's like my desire to fill my world with sound very rarely involves metal. You have to be honest with yourself in that sense, too. There's a fair amount of people that do what I do and maybe claim that they're just as interested in the things that they were interested in when they were young and I just don't know many people that have managed to sustain the interest for really aggressive things for as long as I've been doing this."
He clarifies that "It's just that the times in which I want to hear it and I want to play it are much less than it used to be," but doesn't actually hate metal. He doesn't think it's sexy though, that's for sure. Townsend recently put Devin Townsend Project on hold in favor of doing four albums he felt the urge to pursue, as well as financial reasons. Townsend has not revealed what any of those albums or projects are yet.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlP90M1lDxQ[/youtube]
