Devin Townsend abruptly and surprisingly put Devin Townsend Project on hold in January to work on several new projects. Since then he's announced he's working on a variety of new music with a wide range of new people. He's also made it known he's working on a new Ziltoid EP and an album called Empath due out in March 2019.
Townsend has also clarified that he wants to bring back Devin Townsend Project at some point, but says in a new interview with The Prog Report that he basically just lost interest in the project for the time being. Townsend cites being burnt out on the band and a seeming artistic stagnation, which are all really good reasons to step away (instead of falling into writing uninspired material).
"I only struggled with it because of the personal implications. I hate hurting people that I care about, and everybody in the band obviously would have been happy for it to continue indefinitely, but I'm more happy with that decision than I've been with a decision I've made in many, many years. It was exactly what I needed to do. It was such a good situation in a lot of ways, but every band has a shelf life in my estimation, and a lot of how I write is sort of taking inspiration from the people and the things that I found myself surrounded by."
"With DTP, we toured so much, and it was the same people over and over and over again that the social ramifications of being around those people, it degrades over time. But it also for me, as a writer, it ends up being something that you're writing about a vacuum in a way. You're writing about being in a band, and in line with everything I've done in the past that has been of significance to the audience, it's not because I was writing about just being a musician. It was about everything that was surrounding my life. Everything that was in my path on the way to the next age is what the music ends up being inspired by, and I just found that with DTP, by the end, all I had as a frame of reference was being on planes and playing shows."
I just kind of ran out interest, if I'm being honest. Now I'm in a situation where there's a whole new cast of characters in my world. Whether or not we're in bands together, it's just new people as a result of having made this decision, and those people are inspiring me to do things that I'm really happy with. It was a great decision for me."
In the meantime, Devin Townsend just released Devin Townsend Project's live album Ocean Machine – Live at the Ancient Roman Theatre Plovdiv, which covers everything from recent stuff to the entirety of his debut solo album Ocean Machine.
