Devin Townsend spoke about his The Moth project for the first time back in 2017, and it's still in the works. The Moth was originally billed as "this symphony with all these cocks and vaginas and death" that'll be "be so over-the-top, with symphonies and choirs," though now it seems to have taken on a new form.
In an interview with the Everblack podcast, Townsend touched on The Moth saying he's not exactly sure what the final product will be. All he knows for sure is that it's gonna be a lot of material.
"Everything I do tends to evolve over time, and I think Moth will be no different — at this point, at least; and who knows where it's actually gonna land. But this point Moth almost seems like a blanket term for a number of things, whether or not it's a bunch of albums or a bunch of other media or it's an Atmos thing or it's characters or if it's streaming — I don't know what it is yet," said Townsend.
"But it seems like I'm calling this period of creative output, I just refer to it as The Moth, but I don't know exactly what it's gonna entail. I do know it's a lot of shit though. There's a lot of things that are brewing concurrently. So although I may not know exactly what it is yet, I have no fear that when it all finally gets done, it's gonna be like an onslaught."
Townsend also touched on the creative process and elaborated on why he's taking a break from touring. Long story short, the whole "record an album and then go on tour" cycle just doesn't work for the guy anymore, and he'd rather find a different way to make a living off his art.
"I think that the benefit of this one is over the past 15 years, maybe a little less since, since [2009's] Addicted though, my life has been a relentless treadmill of a certain routine of tour, tour, tour, tour, tour, come home, blast out a record, tour, tour, tour, tour, tour, come home, blast out a record, tour. You know what I mean? And although I'm reasonably proud of most of that content, so much of it was not coming from a place of what I'm hoping this is, where you put your foot on the brakes and you're, like, 'Okay, I'm not going out now. I'm going to create an environment for me to figure out where I've landed as a person and as a creative entity.'
"And the last time I had the opportunity to do that was City and Ocean Machine, I guess, because that's before I had any momentum. That's not to say that — and I guarantee that it's not gonna sound like those because we're half a lifetime or more later than that.
"But what I am saying is that the process that allowed those to be so articulate — like, at the time when I was working on those, when they were done, I was able to say, 'Yeah, I spent enough time thinking about this.' I spent enough time processing why I wrote this and where I'm at and what its intent was and why it should look the way it is that it had a force of will behind it that although I think I've been reasonably successful at maintaining over the course of this treadmill process, frankly, man, it's not the same.
"It hasn't been the same, 'cause I haven't had a chance to just fucking be, like, 'Dude, where are you? Where's your head at?' I haven't been able to. Just to kind of keep the lights on, it's been, like, you have to get on tour. You have to get on tour. You have to get on tour. So what I've done over the past, like, last year and a half, dude, I've toured six, seven months over the past year and a half. It's just like relentless touring.
"So I finally sat with everybody, and I was, like, 'No more for a while.' And they're, like, 'Well, you have to keep touring.' I was, like, 'But do I? Really?' They were, like, 'Well, how are you going to generate income?' And I was, like, 'I'll figure out a way. I'll figure it out.' Because the end result of being able to really sit with where I'm at and then create something, for better or for worse, that I think is accurate to where I'm at, unless I'm proactive to carve that time out for myself, it's not gonna happen, man. I'm just gonna be back on tour and back on tour and back on tour."
