I don't know if AE was supposed to be a pop album...if it was...pathetic, nowhere near pop quality. This was more of a laid back carboard reproduction of what Dev was staring in the face of....and tha twas moving away from the ultra mega layered emotive epic album and focusing more on the here and now of writing.

You can tell that the songs he wrote and came up with on this CD are generically simplistic compared to the older things he's done.


More air play? Not bloody likely... sold out? Pop culture? Well not until the last song anyway.....

I have a feeling this cd was more of an insult to most 'fans' than anything....basically saying hey look, fuck off, I've done a tonne of shit....this is the latest emotive movement for me(which is easy goin and interesting none the less) that I am willing to release publically...


Hell alot of his lyrics don't really focus or make any goddamn sense, so maybe he thought...why not focus with music, and just fuckin jam out whatever comes to mind.

Hey man... What's your problem?
Why are you still here if you don't like Dev's stuff anymore?
Why are you still here if you don't like people on this board?

What are you searching for?

If AE was an insult to fans, then you post makes you a suitable target for jihad.

my local best buy and borders carries a lot of his stuff...

that's where i buy them... and tell people to buy them...

It was no failure!!!! I think that devin wanted to make an album that wasn't one big conceptual piece of art like a lot of his work tends to be (which is great - I love that shit!) and I think it worked it's ass off as this! It's good to have at least one Devy album that is divided into seperate songs and some of them are damn good songs, damned good.... Some of his best, even! And it did succeed in getting a hell of a lot of people into Dev, I mean, I've been into him for fucking years but I've read plenty of people on the forum here sayign that they got into him via AE, so we must be happy that his audience is expanding because of this record, whether we think it is as good as his others or not.

And anywayz, the next DTB album will fucking rule over all ass so chill

It was no failure!!!! I think that devin wanted to make an album that wasn't one big conceptual piece of art like a lot of his work tends to be (which is great - I love that shit!) and I think it worked it's ass off as this! It's good to have at least one Devy album that is divided into seperate songs and some of them are damn good songs, damned good.... Some of his best, even! And it did succeed in getting a hell of a lot of people into Dev, I mean, I've been into him for fucking years but I've read plenty of people on the forum here sayign that they got into him via AE, so we must be happy that his audience is expanding because of this record, whether we think it is as good as his others or not.

And anywayz, the next DTB album will fucking rule over all ass so chill

I like DTB but how do you know?

My local HMV on Princes Street (the city centre of Edinburgh) always has all the solo Dev and SYL releases. When AE came out, they even had a display for it in the shop.

Really?! Wow. That's one damned cool HMV!

I don't think AE was a failure at all, I think it was another step on the Devy ladder . Definitely not a "selling out" album, or an insult to the fans. If so, why would we be giving it praise? Why would there be multiple threads on AE, both individual songs and the album as a whole?

Oh well, some people are bound to have different opinions. But personally, I liked it!!

I haven't browsed the music section of a Best Buy in quite some time, but I find it pretty cool if they're starting to carry Devin's stuff, it's about damn time! Anyway, now that I think about it, of all of the Borders stores that I know of within an hour drive of me, there is one in Oak Brook, IL that I've seen AE at and hope that it's been bought by now and there's a new AE there in it's place.

Still though, exposure on television (beyond commercials) is probably the largest factor in album sales, and outside of some Headbanger's Ball airtime, I haven't seen much, if any on normal American television.

AE an insult to the fans?

Dude, when I saw DTB live twice, everybody was rocking out to the tunes from Accelerated Evolution as much as any of the other songs.

Except for Bad Devil, that song TRULY gets rocked out too.

As far as I am concerned, while AE may be a little more simplistice and poppy, it still has all the traits that make it a good Devy album.

Complexity, intelligent lyrics, wicked song writing, a wide range of musical and vocal styles.

It's a good fucking album

I like DTB but how do you know?

Because I have faith in the Dev, and I have so far been proven correct, in that he has delivered an SYL album approximately a hundred fucking million times better than the last one, and I have read all of the things that Devin has posted about the new DTB and I know it's going to be killer. He told me in a post last year that with AE and SYL he didn't feel the need to reinvent himself because he was doing both records at once.

We know that when Dev gets serious he gets fuckin serious, and he's actually going to make a complete piece of art this time, a glued-together flowing genius album like the Holy Trinity (Infinity, OM and Terria) and we all know that he is capable of doing it again.... Alien has shown us that he still has insane talent in him.

I live in a town just East of Kansas City and found the AE Digipack (with EKO) at the local Best Buy store. There are quite a few places that I have seen Devin-related CDs for sale. Heck I didn't even know who Devin was until I saw the Relentless video on Headbanger's Ball 2 years ago. But as time moves on there are more and more people I run into who know who he is who SYL is.

(making the roadtrip in April to see SYL in Omaha, NE. I can't fucking wait!!!!!!!)

Even though Devin's work truely deserves LOADS more recognition and succes, that just might come with a price... big audiences tend to expect you to come up with similar music in the long run. IMO, Dev's biggest strength is to constantly use his talents and skills in different ways, without ever sacrificing quality.

And I have enough faith to know the only surprise he would never throw at us is to come up with a generic, truely disappointing album

Even though Devin's work truely deserves LOADS more recognition and succes, that just might come with a price... big audiences tend to expect you to come up with similar music in the long run. IMO, Dev's biggest strength is to constantly use his talents and skills in different ways, without ever sacrificing quality.

And I have enough faith to know the only surprise he would never throw at us is to come up with a generic, truely disappointing album

I never understood bands that essentially continually put out THE SAME album over and over. there is a need for re-invention if I am going to be interested. by the way Thought Industry is awesome...just listened to "short wave...." today...a good example of a heavy band going "catchy", and yet it's still brilliant...

AE simplistic? I can play the whole of Ocean Machine pretty much inside out (okay I have had 7 years to practice it!!!!). I've got all the sound effects nailed as close as possible on my lovely Roland COSM effects board and it's all good.

But can I play Away? Deadhead? Suicide? Nope. Sure I can approximate the basic power chords, but this album is full of lovely big "proper" chords like your guitar teacher wanted you to learn but you didn't cos you wanted to play Angel of Death by Slayer. So that's probably why I can't play a lot of this album for shit!

To be honest, apart from the financial benefits of making a commercially successful album there is little else worth shouting about. Given Devin's diversity, it is most likely that he would appear as a one-hit-wonder to the mainstream, his next album undoubtedly being so different as to alienate his new-found popular fan-base. This may also kill off some of the hardcore fanbase; branding him a sellout and thus burning some currently stable bridges.

Worse - but VERY unlikely - would be that Dev would $ee dollar $igns in his eyes and start churning out Mainstream Devy Formula X (tm) to the disgust of remaining hardcore fans who would immediately dub him a sell-out.

To be honest, the under-ground metal scene is full of idiots who see mainstream success as selling out. Look at Cradle of Filth. They were well loved by many Death Metal fans until Goths started liking them. Then suddenly they were "gay" (I use that term in their context, not mine). They're still a bloody good band, but suddenly they're not so underground , so extreme, so they're no good.

I wonder whether a band's obscurity and/or extremity is as big a selling point to some as a band topping the billboard charts is to a pop fan... It certainly seems to be the case for Woocifer... How sad...

Avalanchemastersong wrote:

I never understood bands that essentially continually put out THE SAME album over and over. there is a need for re-invention if I am going to be interested. by the way Thought Industry is awesome...just listened to "short wave...." today...a good example of a heavy band going "catchy", and yet it's still brilliant...

Yup, nothing too flashy in technical terms but there's that digital nicotine that keeps me getting back to it... same goes for the older TI albums.

Marshall Bravestar wrote:

To be honest, apart from the financial benefits of making a commercially successful album there is little else worth shouting about. Given Devin's diversity, it is most likely that he would appear as a one-hit-wonder to the mainstream, his next album undoubtedly being so different as to alienate his new-found popular fan-base. This may also kill off some of the hardcore fanbase; branding him a sellout and thus burning some currently stable bridges.

Worse - but VERY unlikely - would be that Dev would $ee dollar $igns in his eyes and start churning out Mainstream Devy Formula X (tm) to the disgust of remaining hardcore fans who would immediately dub him a sell-out.

To be honest, the under-ground metal scene is full of idiots who see mainstream success as selling out. Look at Cradle of Filth. They were well loved by many Death Metal fans until Goths started liking them. Then suddenly they were "gay" (I use that term in their context, not mine). They're still a bloody good band, but suddenly they're not so underground , so extreme, so they're no good.

Exactly that!

Seems like this relates a bit to the "Sequels to Dev Albums" topic... I mean I'd certainly like to hear some more in the vein of OM/Infinity/Terria BUT I can't imagine anyone here would like to hear Dev repeat himself... or become too formulaic by any means. I'd much rather hear something NEW that blows me away just as much as anything DTB released so far instead of "recycle!"

I'd much rather hear something NEW that blows me away just as much as anything DTB released so far instead of "recycle!"

Definitely. If Dev has any formula at all, it's to be a constantly progressive and thoughtful songwriter/producer - you always know that you don't know what you'll get when he releases a new album... How formulaic!

...and isn't that the reason why he called the album Accelerated Evolution?