A Labor of Love Nobody Will Spin Twice
Devin Townsend has spent over a decade building The Moth. It shows — and that’s both the best and worst thing about it.
Released May 29 on Inside Out Music, The Moth is Townsend’s self-declared magnum opus: 24 tracks, recorded across more than ten countries with the North Netherlands Orchestra and Choir, featuring guest spots from Steve Vai and Anneke Van Giersbergen, with brass and strings Townsend rewrote himself from scratch. If ambition were the metric, this would be a 10.
The production is genuinely impressive. The orchestral sections — the strings, the brass, the layered female vocals — sound enormous in a way that doesn’t feel accidental. Townsend’s voice, which is hands-down one of the best in metal, is all over this record and it’s at its very best here. In those moments, The Moth delivers exactly what it promises.
Where it struggles is the other thing Townsend does — the prog metal side, the propulsive, almost Strapping Young Lad-adjacent heaviness that made his catalog such a draw in the first place. It surfaces on “War Beyond Words” early in the album: teeth, momentum, the kind of thing that makes you sit up. It shows up again on “Covered By Causes,” which at eight minutes is the record’s most interesting stretch. Both times, it works. Both times, you immediately want more of it. Both times, it disappears.
That’s the central problem with The Moth. The heavy, prog-oriented DNA gets rationed out like it has to be earned, and the album is so committed to its orchestral grandeur that those moments feel like accidents rather than intentions. The result is a record that’s genuinely easier to admire than to enjoy — sprawling, sometimes messy, grandiose in a way that tips into self-serving.
This is clearly a labor of love. The craft is undeniable and the production proves Townsend took his time. But longtime fans aren’t spinning this regularly. There’s not enough of the thing that makes Devin Townsend Devin Townsend.
Score: 6/10