Devin Townsend is about to release a new, exciting entry into his long and storied discography, a record that’ll be called Empath. While Townsend has done plenty of teasing of the new album on Twitter and Instagram, he’s got even more info ready to be relayed to his fans in the form of a making-the-album documentary series. This week, the initial episode of the series debuted. Check it out below.

In this documentary series, Townsend plans on guiding his listeners through the same “interesting psychological and technical avenues” that he went down in creating the new album, which is due out on March 29, 2019. The album took him almost a year and a half to complete, and will include special guests like Steve Vai and Chad Kroeger.

In an earlier post, he revealed the theme of the album. He stated, “in a society where empathy is often viewed as a weakness, being able to feel the same as others is how you learn compassion.” Last year, mxdwn had the chance to speak with Townsend on Empath and his myriad other projects that he has in the works.

In order to make time for the various new projects that he has planned, Townsend put his previous group, Devin Townsend Project, on hiatus. Some of the members of that band joined up with members of another former Townsend band, Strapping Young Lad, to form a new “heavier” band called Imonolith.

UPDATE (1/30): Townsend has released the second video in an ongoing documentary series that gives some background on his upcoming album Empath. In the video he talks about disbanding two of his most well-regarded groups, Strapping Young Lad and more recently Devin Townsend Project.

About DTP, he said: “Leaving DTP and everything was really, really challenging for a number of reasons. As an empathetic person, I hate the idea of hurting people. Everybody’s got their hopes up and we’ve got a cool thing rolling and then I pull the rug out, you know, similar to what I did with Strapping [Young Lad]. I’ve spent a certain amount of time thinking about that and whether or not that’s like a self-sabotage thing or whatever.” Later in the video he said “Both Strapping and DTP weren’t right. They were really great, both of them, but it wasn’t right.”

He discusses doing things for the purpose of pleasing others, a characteristic he finds he carries to a fault. He added that he feels like he has a split personality when it comes to being an artist and musician: one side is calm, competent and determined while the other side is akin a petulant 15 year old, panicking all the time. Check out the full video below:

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat

UPDATE (2/6): Devin Townsend has released the third of his ongoing series of documentary videos. Not only did he release a third part of the documentary, he also released an intro video. In the intro he talks about how the goal of this video series was to shine a light onto how it happened, because as he describes it in the intro, Empath could be described as “over the top.” He sets the scene of the conversations with videographer/musician Mike Zimmer that occur in the third installment.

UPDATE (2/14): Devin Townsend has released the fourth in a series of documentary videos detailing the making of his upcoming album Empath. This episode focuses on the various guest performers on the album, which is highlighted by Steve Vai, Chad Kroeger, Anneke Van Giersbergen and Ché Aimee Dorval but also includes Mike Keneally, Morgan Ågren, Anup Sastry, Samus Paulicelli, Nathan Navarro, Elliot Desagnes, Ryan Dhale and Elektra Women’s Choir.

UPDATE (3/8): Devin Townsend has shared the fifth and sixth episodes in his documentary series detailing the making of Empath. The episodes are also presaged by intro videos to give even more background.

UPDATE (3/27): With just two days until the March 29 release of the long-awaited album Empath, Devin Townsend has released the final installment of his documentary series. Check it out below: