10 Best Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Live Bands Of 2017
3. Devin Townsend Project
Earlier, Alter Bridge managed to sneak onto this list by playing an amazing one-off show in an iconic venue with an orchestra. Then, Dream Theater earned a slot by performing their breakthrough album in its entirety to mark its anniversary. Devin Townsend, meanwhile – having never been a man to do things by halves – looked up and thought “Yeah, f*ck you, I’ll do both!”
Ergo, in September, the Canadian maestro took his eponymous Devin Townsend Project out to the Ancient Roman Amphitheatre in Plovdiv, Bulgaria to celebrate his seminal Ocean Machine: Biomech (1997) record on its twentieth birthday. Oh yeah, and he brought the Plovdiv State Opera Symphony Orchestra with him just for the hell of it.
Needless to say, the end result was a marvel of sheer, impactful bliss, delivering a concert that even had the gall to include a miniature “By Request” portion, because Devin Townsend is that damn amazing.
Furthermore, not only did Devin play the main stage of Download Festival in 2017, but he also headlined a monumental European tour at the beginning of the year, receiving support from the equally beloved prog darlings TesseracT and Leprous.
Seriously, is there anything that this man cannot do?