Devin Townsend – The Moth Livestream Review 29th May @ De Oosterpoort, Groningen, Netherlands
Devin Townsend
De Oosterpoort, Groningen, Netherlands
March 29th, 2025
Something very special is brewing here. The great Canadian has been formulating, preparing and assembling this grand opus for a decade, and tonight/today it finally comes to fruition. Anticipation rises, what a ride we are about to go on.
He has some pretty serious pre-show formailities to get through first however. In typical Devin Townsend fashion, he comes out onstage in a sloppy t-shirt and pyjama pants and gives a loooong monologue to begin proceedings, during which he thanks everyone involved, from Steve Vai to his accountants (because he ‘sucks at money’) to his dogs. The gratitude is flowing out of him.
Now, bathed in blue light, he plays a wild solo acoustic version of ‘Let it Roll’, then a delicate version of ‘Funeral’, before moving on to ‘Hyperdrive’, of which he quickly grows ‘bored’, and it morphs into ‘Life’. It reminds me very much of the beautiful acoustic tour of Australia he did back in 2019, both Melbourne shows of which I attended. He holds the live audience utterly spellbound, all by himself.
Strangely, we now get a 30-minute intermission.
One hour and fifteen minutes after the start of the livestream, the show proper begins. There are so many people on that stage!
Things go dark and quiet, a little epigram about moths appears on the rear screen, and the show begins. But you can tell within five seconds, this show will be worth the wait, and then some. And then some more. It’s clear from the get-go that we are in for an emotional and musical roller-coaster ride!
Dev has dressed up. A little.
After an ambient intro, everything quickly becomes a wall of sound in typical style, a bombastic orchestral assault on the senses. Although, also in typical Dev style, the music and presentation goes through myriad aural and emotional shifts - sometimes it explodes, sometimes it drifts into acoustic and washy ambience, and it strays to all points in between.
Within five minutes, this aural journey has gone into myriad disparate but cohesive musical directions.
For the next eighty minutes, we are treated to an onstage spectacular of almighty proportions. The term ‘rock opera’ does not really do this production justice. It is an operatic and symphonic opus, a journey into the mind of a mad genius, an adventure, a celebration, a near-perfect juxtaposition of rock, opera and symphony, telling a compelling story of birth, life, transformation and death.
Out of the close to 100 people onstage, I want to single out Lynn Wu, lead singer of the Chinese progressive metal band Ou, whose vocal contributions to the piece are very substantial and really quite superb. She has a unique voice, a unique look, and her presence here is eye and ear-popping. She is a fantastic and idiosyncratic addition to proceedings.
And of course, standing (and kneeling, and crouching) at front and centre of it all is the monumental presence of the great man, Hevy Devy himself. His uber-versatile, soaring voice rises to meet, and exceed, the demands of such a work, and his persona lends the piece the drama and tension it needs. It’s actually strange to see him play live for so long without an electric or acoustic guitar in his hands. He doesn’t even touch a guitar until forty-five minutes into the show, and then he plays some beautiful ambient lines for a few minutes and sets it aside again.
Obviously, to have been there in person would have been a once in a lifetime experience, but watching it from the other side of the world, even if I did have to get up before the crack of dawn, is still wondrous – the quality of sound and vision is superb, and the stream does not falter a single time.
The magnitude of this production fairly boggles the mind. To bring this all together across two continents, with a non-unlimited budget, is an astonishing achievement, and all involved must be congratulated. It’s no wonder he felt the need to thank so many people in the intro, and then shake the hand of virtually everyone in the front row when the show is done.
This performance is the next massive step in the monumental ongoing evolution of a prodigious musical talent, and I can’t wait to relive it.
Review by Rod Whitfield
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