STRAPPING YOUNG LAD - Straight Jacket Talk With The Man From Lad Page 2
By Martin Popoff

And in the interest of solidarity and band-dom, Devin made the surprise move of having brother-in-harm Jed Simon play all the guitar parts. "Yes, well, for the good of the project, I wrote a good amount of the riffs, but... for the Devin Townsend Band project, I played everything, and because we did them together, I had no real need to prove anything. And the bottom line is Jed is a better metal player than me, you know what I mean? He's got that right arm, man; he's like... I remember when I was younger, there's that tone that James Hetfield got with his right hand, by picking the SHIT out of it! And Jed's got that, except it's 2003 now and we're playing war music. And I think that's a really cool combo, making this decision to produce Jed, and being really fastidious about the parts, and having an intricate knowledge of what the parts are and just taking a backseat and saying Jed is much better at doing that (sings it) triplet shit. And I think the effects are great."

Back for the charge is death drum legend Gene Hoglan, who lays waste to the record with a crackling energy that is brisk yet rock solid. Turns out the man is finding ways to get even more consistent with his timing than his already looming reputation would have it.

"We got Gene a metronome," explains Dev, "a little flat Korg digital metronome, a blue one, and he just fell in love with it and it became part of him. And everywhere you were Gene was, because you would hear this "Deet do do deet do do' going from room to room. I came into the studio room one day, and like, we both came come out of a really bad time with City, and it was like, I threw a bunch of drum parts at him with City which he has since perfected, and I think he wanted to go into this one being just like the commanding drum bible. So I came into the room one day, looking for Gene, and I see him asleep on the couch and I hear that beeping, and I'm wondering where it's coming from, because it's not coming from his pocket and I realize that he's fallen asleep with it under his ear. He wanted to be the perfect drummer. And for this record, he was like, if we're going to do this, let's just do it, bring it on (laughs)."

STRAPPING YOUNG LAD - Straight Jacket Talk With The Man From Lad Page 3