For me, the blow of Strapping Young Lad's dissolution was softened somewhat with the release of this album shortly afterward. The recent release of Z2 (the sequel to this record for those catching up) reminded me that I haven't written a little bit about the original Ziltoid, which is a modern metal classic, in my opinion. If you've not heard of Ziltoid The Omniscient I suspect you may have been living under some sort of metal-resistant rock. Ziltoid is an intergalactic overlord of Ziltoidia, who invades earth under the premise of tasting our universe's finest cup of coffee. His story is told through the medium of Devin Townsend's meandering, almost operatic in scale heavy metal madness.
I feel that this stands apart from the rest of Devin's solo work as it incorporates a lot of straight-up metal songwriting, although his signature stamp is easily detected. It basically first comes across as a slightly-scaled-back-in-intensity SYL, unlike his previous solo work which has always been sprawling and atmospheric in scope. There is also the comedic factor to consider; something which has always been a part of Mr. Townsend's work, but this also reaches wacky new heights on this album, with plot devices such as The Planet Smasher, Captain Fantastic, Ziltoid himself (who is so omniscient, if there were to be two omnisciences, he would be both), and the twist at the end of his metal epic revealing that it's all the daydream of a kid working in a Starbucks or something. Can you ruin the ending to a concept album? Looks like I just did.
All in all if you don't take your metal too seriously and perhaps contradictorily also love searingly precise instrumentation and extremely well-crafted song writing, you need to check this out, if you haven't already.
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