Devin Townsend Announces 2023 Australian Tour

July 7, 2023

Metal legend Devin Townsend will return to Australia later this year for a run around the country in support of his new album Lightwork. Townsend will begin the tour in Perth at Magnet House on Wednesday, 8th November, with shows in Melbourne and Sydney to follow before he finishes up in Brisbane at the Tivoli on Sunday, 12th November.

Townsend’s last trip to the country was pre-COVID in 2019, famously playing a three-hour show at Melbourne’s Thornbury Theatre that was part-gig, part-Q&A.

Devin Townsend: ‘Call Of The Void’

Lightwork, released late in 2022, was a world away from Townsend’s previous record The Puzzle, which landed in 2021. This is entirely in keeping with the whole of the Canadian artist’s career, having twisted and turned on every release through every one of his many projects since he broke out with the band Strapping Young Lad in the mid-90s.

“There were a lot of times I would try to take it in a direction that, after getting almost to the conclusion of that idea, I was like, ‘well that doesn’t work’,” Townsend told Wall Of Sound about Lightwork. “I had to pull back and say I was losing the vibe of it and it was just turning into this abstract chaos. By the time it was done, I was just so relieved that I was okay with it. That’s not a ringing endorsement, I guess (laughs), but it’s my criteria still, so I’ll stick with it.”

“The acceleration of differences between each record over the past decade, I think is more indicative of an accelerated rate of change in my personal life over the past 10 years,” he continued. “The music is just a reflection of that, in the same way that it was during City or Alien or Infinity. It’s the same process, it’s exactly the same thing, it’s just that the age of 40 to 50 was really different, I had kids, and then of course you throw in the pandemic and war and all this stuff, and the grist for the mill is just plentiful, it’s everywhere.