I heard Dev first time when I had a beer with my friend and he had just bought Accelerated Evolution (Or was it Terria...) and he popped it on and... oh man... Nice cold beer, warm summer night, a Dev virgin; It was bliss

I knew of Strapping Young Lad when they were about, but I got into Devin's solo stuff when my other half played Synchestra on the car stereo in the Bloodstock car park.

My boyfriend at the time said; "You should listen to this." - it was Storm, from Accelerated Evolution. I loved it and I sought out as many of Dev's CD's then as I could find in little old New Zealand - only his solo stuff, though. It's odd, I've only *just* started listening to SYL and I really love it.

July, 1993 with the Vai CD. I was a huge Steve Vai fan, and being a guitarist, I was excited to hear what he had come up with this time. I put the CD in, and as soon as I heard Devin sing, I didn't even hear the guitar anymore. I had never heard anyone sing like that before. He was all over the place, seemingly out of control, but in perfect control. I was floored, and obsessed.

Same to me, but it was one year later. And for the first time i seen Devin just last year during the Hellfest in France. Sixteen Years later !

Back in 1995, I became a fan of Front Line Assembly. I read the liner notes to Millennium and found out that Devin contributed guitars. I later saw a video for SYL's Detox and confused it with FLA's Plasticity...got me into SYL immediately. Been a fan ever since.

I was a Steve Vai fan, but never actually paid much attention to vocals on his records. My boyfriend got me into Devs music a few years ago, starting from SYL. Then I started revealing his solo stuff. I was totally blown away by Synchestra and Accelerated Evolution…and basically everything else.

Friend sent me Storm over MSN in 2008. Thought 'Nnngnghh, this is the music I've missed my whole life'

Devin all the way since then.

I was a late bloomer.....

A year or two back, probably around when Devin was promoting Ki or Addicted, I had a thing for Industrial metal. I was desperately seeking good Industrial metal bands so I was going on YouTube listening to whatever recommendations I could find and eventually I stumbled upon a video of someone's Top 5 (maybe 10? Can't remember) Industrial metal bands, so I watched. There was of course Ministry and some other usual suspects but then one band name caught my eye, "Strapping Young Lad". "That's a funny name" I thought, then band pics were being displayed and I had two thoughts going on at once "That guy must be the biggest nerd/craziest dude ever". As the band pics were displayed, Oh My Fucking God kick started and right from the intro I was hooked. Unfortunately the video only played the first minute or so, as a result I went and looked everything else up and fell in love. I of course found out Strapping wasn't really an Industrial metal band but I was okay with that, everything else in their catalog just clicked with me that I just didn't give a shit, almost everyday I went on YouTube to just listen to the albums.

Then I found out about Devin's Solo stuff, I didn't like much of it at first but I grew an appreciation for it after finding out why I like the music I listen to.
I like music with TRUE emotion, theatricality, variety, and a large scale.
This is why I listen to Metal, a lot of bands encompass those elements and Devin pretty much sums up all of those elements into a big fuckin' package. It's when I started to appreciate music outside of Metal that started to listen to Devin's solo work and I was so pissed off to find what I was missing! So I finally decided to get whatever of Dev's I can get my hand's on, I didn't have any money though but I didn't want to pirate his music but luckily my brother had all of the SYL albums and MOST of Devin's solo work on his hard drive. So I just got those off of him but he did not have Physcist or Addicted, as of now I have yet to own Physicist but shortly after I collected my brother's digital copies I went out and bought Addicted, I thought I just had to buy a physical copy.

So yeah...

Lettuce.
Thrusting a dtp CD into my hands at some point prior to BOA. Sadly I've gotten into an annoying habit of not liking bands till I've heard them live. Blown away, cheers Dev.

I read a review for The New Black on Ultimate Guitar back when it was released and it got me interested in the band. I checked out Wrong Side since that was the song that I had been hearing the most about from the album and I was pretty blown away by the production, intensity, craziness, musicianship, vocals, etc. I had never heard a band that sounded quite like this. So I started checking out older SYL stuff and eventually got into Devin's solo material as well - I've been hooked ever since.

Dead. Head. pure and simple.
One of my good friends showed me Deadhead back in about '06 (after failing to get me into SYL ;_;) and I thought it was the greatest thing ever.
Then I heard the rest of Accelerated, then Synchestra, then City I think, and it all went down(up?)hill from there
...I regret not listening to him earlier because I never got to see SYL live....

Mate of mine worked at the HMV in town and had his own section for "smaller" or niche type of music.
dealing with UK Distributor called "Plastic Head" (no idea if they`re still going) who needed a minimum order size so my mate was picking a few cd`s to make the order up, i saw the title "Heavy as a really heavy thing" which tickled my chucklestick, so demanded he get one for me.
that was late 96, just after we left school.

the rest, as they say, is history.... seen them on every UK tour so far (including what i believe was the first UK visit just after City came out.. saw them at The Attic in Cheltenham which was quite small and essentially the band played over the cd tracks - i`m assuming because tour budgets were not yet able to stretch to the full keyboard/sample station that is available now) and bought every album.... never walked away from either disappointed

making the most of it, i`m 31 now so i`ll probably have to turn it all off and start listening to radio 4 fairly soon. weak

In the Dutch music magazne Oor ("Ear") there was a review of Terria, saying: "Heavy music that brings you to a world of vast coloured bubbles, floating all around". I like coloured bubbles

Went to record store, gave it a short first listen, doubted because I never heard something this heavy (wasn't a metal head, still don't consider myself one), but still bought it since it sucked me right in. It's my alltime fav now:)

I'd been hearing about Dev for years but for some reason I never bothered to listen to his music, I guess I always thought his music was going to be silly or wasn't so serious due to some of the interviews I had read with him. But then after hearing his tracks on Ayreons 'The Human Equation' I was just blown away, I found his tracks so powerful and moving, after that i pretty much tracked down everything he's done, been hooked since.

I love reading these posts. Very interesting how people with different musical backgrounds have found Devin in very different ways.

Not easy for me to recall the first time I heard Dev, cause he wasn't an instant hit with me. I'm pretty sure that my brother had showed me some SYL stuff by 2005 though as I recall being familiar with him when he got The Human Equation by Ayreon (which was no doubt 2005)... SYL, at the time was too extreme for me, but I really got into the little parts he had made for that Ayreon album... Then I found out about his solo stuff and song by song (first Life, Christeen, Bad Devil, Earth Day etc.) I started to get into it. By the time Ziltoid came out, I was a fan enough to buy the album and I remember it being a great help with getting through the shitty summer job I had back then. (of course, my current job is even worse, hah)

But I have to mention that Ki was ultimately the thing that made Devin leap from being in my top 20 musicians to more like top 3 musicians. My brother, who introduced me to Devin, didn't get it at all at the time , but I loved it. I might have played that album more than any other album ever.