Album Details

• Artist: Strapping Young Lad
• Album: Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing
• Label: Century Media
• Year of Release: 1995
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2011-09-05

It is hardest to retrospectively catagorize and summarize any seasoned artist's earliest works. The evolution of a musician is one in which you can almost always draw visible parallels from beginning to end. Beyond that, you are constantly having to scrutinize what each song, each sound and each moment have to offer instead of,  in spite of and in favor of the corresponding material. While I hate to say it, this can all be construed as me leaving myself an out for judging one of my favorite musicians so poorly. Frankly, though, Devin's debut album Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing is, while living up to it's title aptly, very misguided and ultimately feels like a badly-managed sewing-together of ideas that, had he had the time and means to flesh out, might have eventually made a bigger initial impact.

What hurts the most is that the first two tracks offer up incredible amounts of promise and satisfaction. "SYL" can still, after 5 albums and the band's indefinite hiatus, be seen as a perfect sumnation of the message behind Strapping in both title and content. You feel it somehow more potent, more pointed when Devin proclaims to "Fucking hate you". He makes no qualms in describing the type of person he hates, and uses a bombastic chorus to offer his own enigmatic solution. "In The Rainy Season" is a template for much of SYL's future work, where the tempo and rhythm of the drums spur the crunching, industrial guitars forward, and where Devin's vocals soar above it all in collosal fashion.When the song breaks down into a mid-paced riff ("Gone Way Down...Down...Down...Down"), it flashes a sense of melody and emotion that are definiable trademarks of much of Devin's solo work. Many signs of the great things to come...

...unfortunately, most of them wouldn't be on this record. Pointedly average and underwhelming in comparison are the likes of "Goat", "Cod Metal King", "Critic", etc. A good 75% of the album feels much like the title of another of the middle-of-the-road tracks; "The Filler". Probably the coolest moment to be had is the jaw-dropping vocal gymnastics of "HAppy Camper (Carpe B.U.M.)". Listen closely and hear how little Devin inhales between bursts of somewhat unintelligable insanity. Equal parts impressive and frightening. 

A proper stepping stone is always easier to see favorably in retrospect. Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing is easily the worst thing Devin Townsend has done, but despite the blunt nature of that comment, just barely enough cream rises to the top of the proceedings to, at the very least, see it as that proverbial stone that had to be crossed in order to continue the climb upwards to bigger and much better things. 

User Reviews and Comments

Review:

on 2012-02-20 CharlesMartel Said:

I am of the opinion that "As Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing" was made by Canadian metallists Strapping Young Lad to be deliberately crap. They gave it a really dumb title and then issued it so that they could claim that have improved ever since this, their debut. In truth, they couldn't really get any worse than this. If this was not the reason, I can honestly think of no other reason for it.

The riffs are ponderous and chug along without delivering anything. The vocals are awful and the attempt at humour in the songwriting can only be described as lame. And to make matters worse the guitars are frequently buried under layers of inappropriate keyboards. In fact, it is hard to identify what it is that makes this album so poor, as distinct from anything else which may contribute to that. If I had to choose, it would be the lyrics which are just appalling.

Despite the fact that you may have noticed me writing rather a lot of negative reviews lately, I actually don't like writing them. For one thing it shows up the occasional deficiencies in my musical taste. For seconds, it is much harder to say something negative about an album, with any degree of consistency and originality, than it is to be positive. That perhaps may explain why I hate this album. Not only does it show up how crap I am at choosing albums to buy, but it forces me to endure it again in order to write a review, long after I had buried it in the darkest recesses of my musical collection.

If this album were a film, it would be "Snakes on a Plane". If it were a book it would be any one of the Twilight series. If it were art it would be Tracy Emin's unmade bed. If it were a TV advert it would be that annoying git from Go Compare. The only thing on the album which could make any claim to being half decent isn't even written by Strapping Young Lad - it is a Judas Priest cover and seeing as I loathe and detest Judas Priest with the ferocity of a Rangers fan watching Celtic score the winner in the 90th minute, that in itself says something for sure.

This album can truly be said to have put me off Strapping Young Lad for good. I never ventured back into their catalogue and every time I have heard one of their songs out of context, it has always taken me back to the days when I first put this mess into my CD player, and therefore I hate it for bringing back such unpleasant memories.
Rating: 1/10