Devin Townsend Project, Tesseract, Manahan Live Show Review

November 3rd, 2010 - Toronto,ON - The Mod Club

MANAHAN – www.myspace.com/corymanahan
The opener being one of two Canadian bands that played tonight displayed just how capable this country is to contribute to the heavy metal culture. Although the very talented guitarist, Cory Manahan, caught my eye, or should I say my ear, being a vocalist, does not sound even remotely as good. Luckily his guitar skills slightly outweigh his lack in vocals, but still would have to consider either working on it or getting a new vocalist altogether. With skills that could easily compete with almost any other guitarist in this generation, there are high hopes for this local band to be another grand Canadian gem.

TESSERACT – www.myspace.com/tesseract
This was my first time seeing this band, which at first was a step up from the previous band that included a great array of heavy hard-hitting beats from the drums, twice the guitar along with heavy bass lines, but once the vocalist came on stage I felt that they lost their balls almost instantly. Although appearing to be giving it all he got from head banging along with his mic to strutting around the stage, the projection of his voice wasn’t nearly enough to give the band the desired metal edge.

DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT – www.myspace.com/devintownsenddtb www.hevydevy.com
Canada’s home-grown, Devin Townsend, was a real pleasure to see live, with his powerful, impressive melodies and enthralling if not the very least entertaining stage presence. During the entire set, everybody was clearly having a great time, like one big metal family, sharing shoves in the pit, nonstop stage diving done by all crowd surfers, even sharing the stage with Devin himself, which one lucky fan got to do his own version of a pig squeal and guttural death metal growl. His completely comedic personality surely made people laugh between each song. The humour was another great effect that always puts the crowd in a great mood. But really it was the music, that was so uplifting, and energizing it made the entire venue go absolutely wild. For long-time fans of Devin Townsend, since the SYL days and new fans alike got to hear familiar songs throughout his entire solo career. The musical prowess and love for metal that Devin Townsend has, truly shows that Canada has another rare devoted artist to produce epic, extraordinary and outstanding pure fucking metal. If you have never heard of Devin Townsend, I’d highly recommend checking it out, for you will most likely find something that you can fall in enjoy listening to, considering its wide range of musical styles that can attract almost all peoples of different tastes that you can have in heavy metal.

Overall, the night was very lively and brought in a big enough crowd to pack the whole venue. Everybody was having so much fun it was contagious just looking at the crowd. Even though a lot of fans were primarily there for The Devin Townsend Project to hit the stage, that doesn’t mean that the first two bands didn’t entice the crowd the slightest bit.