STRAPPING YOUNG LAD Vinyl Box Set On The Way - Jan. 18, 2012
 
Finnish extreme metal non-profit Blood Music has announced an incredibly long-overdue vinyl worship session of every last bit of STRAPPING YOUNG LAD's music one could ever ask for.
 
The monstrous limited edition 7xLP box set discography will contain all five STRAPPING YOUNG LAD full-lengths, as well as extra vinyl dedicated to the band's non-album material, plus other special gifts yet to be announced.
 
The genre-busting Canadian industrial/death band has never seen their seminal albums "Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing", "SYL" nor "The New Black" touch wax before. Their other two records — "City" and "Alien" — were pressed in ultra-limited numbers of 500 copies only and sold out within months of their release.
 
The massive box set is slated for a late 2012/early 2013 release.

I found as a reaction to the complications of decon and the sheer bulk of work thats been going on (seriously, it’s insane) my writing ended up going in 3 ways recently:
 
1) A very commercial sounding (for the most part) but beautiful and melencholic album full of easy to digest dev songs…Epicloud. I don’t know why it came out, but it did, so I’m going to get it out of my system.
 
2) Casualties of Cool: a duo with myself and Che (ki)… it sounds like haunted Johnny cash songs. late night music, completely isolated sounding and different than anything I’ve done. Che sings most of the leads, and it’s probably the truest reflection of who I am in life at this point. Trying to release it in tandem with Epicloud.
 
3) Z2 epic epic epic, complicated, musical, sci-fi, immense expense, the goal of it all I suppose
 

Canadian musician/producer Devin Townsend (STRAPPING YOUNG LAD, STEVE VAI, LAMB OF GOD, DARKEST HOUR, GWAR) played four shows in London in November 2011 dedicated to his tetralogy album concept — a great journey through Devin's different states of musical moods — which he started in 2009 with the albums "Addicted" (2009) and "Ki" (2009) and finished with last year's "Deconstruction" and "Ghost". The concerts were professionally recorded and filmed for a unique box-set release, which he has decided to call "By A Thread".  
 
"I submitted the mixes for the audio and we just finished the cover. I think the entire project is like a 10-disc set or something ridiculous. . . We're going to do the four DVDs, four audio discs [CDS], one of bonus footage, and because the shows are too long to fit the encores on the audio discs, we have a disc of just the encores. . . There's bonus material from 'Ghosts' and 'Deconstruction'. We did a bunch of PUNKY BRÜSTER stuff [Townsend's 1996 project] and for 'Addicted' [concert] we did a bunch of old catalog stuff, just to flesh it out. So the people that come to the show are not just feeling ripped off that we played for 55 minutes and then buggered off.

Due on June 18 in Europe and June 19 in North America through HevyDevy Records/InsideOut Music, "By A Thread - Live in London 2011" will contain all four shows on four DVDs, plus a five-CD set (the four albums and one disc with all of the encores).