I've read a lot of interviews where Devin talks about the musicians that influenced him. I've always thought it was cool how he's able to coalesce all kinds of different musical ideas into a very unique sound. But that got me thinking...Devin's pretty popular amongst the metal community, and he's been in the game for a while now...he has to be influencing other artists at this point, too.

What bands/artists do you guys think have been influenced by Devin's style and sound?

Textures

Me. Hahaha!

I thought about this a few days ago.
I speak to a bunch of dudes around Melbourne that play in metal bands, and a decent amount of them are into Townsend stuff, but none of them sound like either SYL, or Townsend's solo stuff.
You're more likely to hear bands trying to rip off Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, or some Mike Patton band. All those artists have pretty obvious and distinct characteristics... I think most of the time, Townsends music is too dynamic for anyone to draw a similar sound from.

His voice is too hard to replicate. His guitaring, outside of a couple of signature riffs and similar sounding solos and licks is very broad. And I don't think anyone can be fucked trying to replicate his production qualities.

My point is, the influence is there, it just rarely comes across as being obvious.
I know that the Gojira drummer is a big fan of Gene Hoglan... that's probably the most obvious influence I've heard come from SYL (I love Gojira).

Finnish bands Wintersun and Stam1na are both influenced by Devin and you can hear it too. Stam1na sometimes sounds like a cousin of SYL and you can hear some influence in the singing of both Antti Hyyrynen (Stam1na) and Jari Mäenpää (Wintersun) as well.

Perhaps with Wintersun you will be even able to hear some of that wall-of-sound influence on the upcoming Time album, they've been working on for... more than 3 years...

French band Scarve

French band Scarve

Yup, healthy dose of SYLish madness there.

Also Smaxone and Mnemic.

Fear Factory.

All the mechanical and electronic sounds are heard right from the first SYL album.

Fear Factory.

All the mechanical and electronic sounds are heard right from the first SYL album.

It's the other way round.

Fear Factory.

All the mechanical and electronic sounds are heard right from the first SYL album.

It's the other way round.

yea it's kinda hard to influence a band that came before you.

I listened to "Soul of a new machine" a few months ago for the first time and was a bit bummed, because it's influence on HAARHT was much more obvious than i expected. But i still like HAARHT, and of course it has it's own value.

soul of a new machine is pretty crappy.

Gojira, Escpecially the album From mars to Sirius.

Me. I have been heavily influenced/inspired by Dev.

Gojira, Escpecially the album From mars to Sirius.

Oh? I can't hear any personally.