The extreme metal musician has put on a pledge drive to fund his project that the music industry would never have supported. Unconventional rewards for donations include naming your pets and personal guitar lessons.

Best know for being the founder, songwriter,vocalist, and guitarist in extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad from 1994 to 2007, Devin Garret Townsend is a Canadian musician, songwriter and record producer, and has had an extensive career as a solo artist.

Devin Garret Townsend is now working on pledge drive project “Casualties Of Cool”. The term, according to Devin, “pretty accurately sums up what this endeavour stands for as well, people strive so hard to ‘fit in’ that ultimately they lose themselves in the process.”

Devin calls “Casualties Of Cool” “a real passion project”, that “not since Ocean Machine (my first record) have I had the opportunity to do music for the sheer sake of the love of it.” and believes that “It represents a fair bit to me.”

In this pledge drive, he states that “it’s a ‘common goal’ in my mind that we can strive to make things that are awesome, funny, serious, uncompromising and ultimately a compliment to daily life for all of us, the likes of which the standard ‘music industry’ would never ever ever allow.”

This pledge drive involves unconventional rewards including MP3 voice messages, naming your pets, private guitars and vocal lessons (these are already gone). Fans can still get a 2 CD fan box set with a £133 pledge, a CoC screen print for £45, a limited edition guitar strap for £33, a lyric book for £29, a bone shaped USB for £28, a T-shirt for £24, or a Casualties of Cool Poster for £19 . Vinyls and CDs are still available.