Strapping Young Lad - Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing

Brilliant Industrial Vibe mixed with Buzzy Chainsaw Riffs and interwined with hammering industrial drumloops. Devin makes the song flows dynamic and the track listing is smartly placed to not bore the listener in any way.
Crazy lyrics and demented vocals suddenly burst out in the middle of lullaby like passages.
"S.Y.L" , "In The Rainy Season", " Happy Camper (Carpe B.U.M.) " and "Skin Me"..... are my personal favs
Unlike several good albums which start incredible and interesting and fade out in the end, this is one of those rare albums that gets more and more interesting as it progresses and "Satan's Ice Cream Truck" is sarcastic finale to this industrialized Urban beast.
The industrial beats and lack of a real drummer made me worry abt it in the beginning, but that goes well with overall structure of the album and the nature of the vocals !!
And Unlike their sophomore release which has 5 incredible singles juxtaposed between Fillers. this one is pretty consistent too. So a 9 from me.

Mind-boggling how this record is rated lower than the self-titled one and considering that quality wise, this record is not that far from City. This record was created by Devin alone and according to him, it sold only 100 copies when it was released. Thrash fans ran away from it like sissies when they heard it. The album was simply too heavy for them. Even the title promised sonic mayhem. Like any Townsend album, this was not for everyone, like any other bombastic, innovative music. One of the heaviest albums ever recorded. Its obnoxiously loud, bordering on chaos but without descending into pointless noise. This album, like most Townsend albums, is above any other genre specification, a prog one. Yes, it has a touch of thrash, death and industrial, but the way he messes with song structures and the way he blends them together so coherently this is without a doubt a progressive metal album. And real prog, not some pop band (-cough- Dream Theater -cough-) masquerading as a prog band. Progressive metal is nowadays one of the most misused metal genres. Prog was a label attached to bands that would at least attempt to be unique, innovative, out-of-the-box. Now every band that messes a little bit with song structures here and there it is labeled as prog. Couldn't be more wrong.

Great tracks: S.Y.L., In The Rainy Season, Happy Camper, Critic, The Filler - Sweet City Jesus.

Decent tracks: Drizzlehell.

Forgettable tracks: Goat (Pantera worship - every band that tried to copy Pantera's sound failed), Cod Metal King (extremely monotonous song), Skin Me.

Bonus tracks: Satan's Ice Cream Truck (parody song about extreme metal; an average track), Japan (this is material that would fit more with his solo projects; has a brilliant chorus but aside from it, the song is dull), Monday (just decent; nothing exceptional), Exciter (Judas Priest cover - Devin's voice blows Halford's any day, thus this cover is even better than the original).

Yeah this is definitely their career best alongside SYL. Just listened to it yesterday and it still sounds fresh and unique and very crooked and quite idiosyncratic with Devin's signature touches very prevalent. He dropped those elements completely for City which sounds boring to listen now. And I think this will stand the test of time better than SYL as well. So easily his best. And it is fucking heavy enough, just listen how the guitars and the vocals are mixed in a wall of sound way. Freakily good stuff.