Devin Townsend "PowerNerd" (2CD+BD-A w/Atmos) 10/25/2024

[Thonolan]

Blu-ray authoring is very poor I must say. Initial Menu is a very bare/poor screen where you can only select tracks and audio setup. The song Powernerd plays in the background, in stereo. Not even the effort of having a dedicated music for the menus, maybe taken from the extra tracks of the second CD. Oh, those extra tracks are not present in the Blu-ray, not even in HiRes stereo. They could (should) have included those extra tracks, a dedicated 5.1 audio mix, maybe a couple of videoclips or a brief "making of" of the album or a simple interview with Devin. And the commentary version doesn't appear here. Songs have static images and the title and that's it.

That's disappointing, considering that for instance the blu-ray of his 2019 album Empath was quite impressive content-wise.

I had my usual couple of listens in stereo to get familiar with the music and I'll hopefully find some spare time to check out the Atmos mix (from Apple Music) later today and see if it's worth investing in the physical release. I have an Atmos system (7.2.4) and I'll report after listening.

I have to say I wasn't impressed with the music. Not truly disappointed, either - it's Devin, sounds like Devin, and I those first two spins were enjoyable, but for his own standards I found most of the songs fairly simple, unadventurous and kinda samey, albeit with a pleasant sound to these ears. A good thing about it is that, as with every new release or re-release we've got from him in the last 5-6 years, it's not badly brickwalled. The stereo mix shows a relatively healthy (for modern standards) DR 9. Devin had his DR 6-7 era for a long time (2002-2018 or so) but he's consistently around 9-10 as of lately.