10 Best Canadian Rock Bands Of All Time
8. Strapping Young Lad
In 1994, the wildly talented metal vocalist Devin Townsend was at a loose end. He’d been touring and working on other people’s projects - he needed to find his own corner in the booming music industry. The grinding menace of Strapping Young Lad was the answer to his problems.
The project started as a nom de guerre for Townsend himself, accompanied by drum machines and the odd session player on debut Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing. It became a cult property through its extreme sounds and black humour - tracks like “Skin Me” and “Satan’s Ice Cream Truck” neatly exposing that dichotomy.
SYL turned into a proper band with 1997’s City, arguably their masterpiece. The songs are brutal and punishing but the musicianship is top tier, and Townsend one of the most charismatic and expressive vocalists on the dark side of metal.
The band had been off and on for a while, with no major releases since 2006’s The New Black, but they - and the wider world of Devin Townsend - remain a delightfully odd, confrontational but somehow buoyant act.