Fell asleep on the couch, woke up to see Jay Leno announcing Vai's new group, watched the performance, bought Sex & Religion that following Monday.

My interest in metal had been growing, from Limp Bizkit to Soad and Bodom I think, and asking for some heavier stuff someone on IRC sent me a few SYL songs, probably New Flesh, OMFG, Detox and Underneath the Waves, I think it was soon after the release of Accelerated Evolution.
Detox is probably the one that got my interest (and I remember for a few months I found Underneath the Waves to noisy, while it's now one of my fav' SYL song).
DLed SYL and DT discographies like a whore soon after . I remember I was working with DT playing in the background, and more precisely Infinity. At some point I stopped and thought "uh, is it just noise ?", it was Ants I think.
Can't remember which DT songs got my attention first, the more catchy ones probablt, Bad Devil, Cristeen, Night, Life...
And I eventually discovered what music really is, and bought most of 'em of course.

Fell asleep on the couch, woke up to see Jay Leno announcing Vai's new group, watched the performance, bought Sex & Religion that following Monday.

Devy and Vai on Jay Leno??
I'd love to see that clip

In October of 1995, I was finishing up boot camp down in San Antonio, TX (Air Force). During our sixth week, on town pass, I bought three cassette tapes at a music store: Life of Agony - Ugly, Marilyn Manson - Smells Like Children, and Strapping Young Lad - Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing.

HAARHT was just a random buy, I'd never heard of the band before, but there began the obsession. I did own Sex & Religion since it had come out, but it took years before I realized both singers where the same. Not a huge fan of Sex & Religion.

Fell asleep on the couch, woke up to see Jay Leno announcing Vai's new group, watched the performance, bought Sex & Religion that following Monday.

Devy and Vai on Jay Leno??
I'd love to see that clip

So would I (again). I've never seen a clip of it online. Not even on Steve Vai's site. I can't even remember what song they performed, but I was absolutely intrigued with Devin.

This is as close as I can get:
http://www.berklee.edu/news/2000/11/conv2000sv.html

Alien

[Keeker]

2006. I was chatting with djskrimp in iChat - we'd become friends on another non-music forum - and he was asking what music I liked. I trotted out my list and he said he'd send something I might like... Pixillate and Christeen came through first and I was hooked pretty quick. He sent more, I listened, I bought the CDs, I joined this forum a few months later. So here we are!

Back in 2005 when I was still really into Wintersun a friend of mine bought Alien. I had heard of this Devin Townsend from some interviews with Jari Mäenpää (Wintersun's songwriter) and he basicly praised Devin to heaven. Despite that I didn't check Devin's stuff out 'cause I thought he'd be just some boring guitar hero.
Well anyway this friend of mine played Alien through these tiny stereos and everyone in the room was disappointed with the music and the sounds and just about everything on Alien. Except for me. I fell in love with Devin's voice the second he started screaming on Imperial.

But that didn't start my addiction. It took about 4 months to buy another SYL album (which was chicken feather) and all that time Alien just grew and grew and grew. One day in school I overheard some weird guy (our very own Nasalspray) listening to SYL on his mp3 player. He told me to go and buy Terria and I did. It was awesome but it didn't do it to me either.

I bought Devin's record's one by one and liked them all a lot but finally 7 or so months after hearing Alien for the first time I bought Infinity which was my 7th Devin record. All this time I had listened to this stuff 'cause it was new and exciting but Infinity pushed over the edge and made a fanboy. After that I've found myself unable to get bored to Devin's music. I was extremely depressed when I first got Infinity and it messed with my head a bit but eventually helped me over some really bad times.

I bought a magazine in town then came home. Slapped on the cover cd and about halfway through SYL - Devour came on. I repeated the song a few times then went out again and bought the album. Over the next 2 months bought everything Devin had put out up to then. Basically an instant favorite from the very, very start. I've instantly loved everything from the instant I heard it, and every album I bought after SYL I hadn't heard any songs from either.

Also the day I heard Devour and bought the SYL album was the day the All In The Family tour came to Manchester (my nearest proper venue). Two weeks later when I finished reading the magazine and saw the ad for it I kicked myself in the nuts.

Devin Townsend's name was being thrown around alot on the Dream Theater forums. so I looked at his Wikipedia page, and for some reason his pic made me decide he was an acoustic singer song writer. But anyway, I searched his name on YouTube, and the Vampira video was my first hit. I watched it, and shit my pants! The vocals were amazing, it was totally not acoustic, and the video itself was a riot. so I did more research on him, and set out to purchase one of his CDs. I found Alien in Best Buy one day, and I shit my pants listening to it. It was the album that got me into the more extreme types of vocals, along with Into Eternity's The Scattering of Ashes. So yeah, I'd say Devin was one of my most important musical discoveries ever.

I first heard Dev when he sang on Sex and Religion.

Later on, I heard Underneath the waves on a Metal Hammer comp cd (I think it was Metal Hammer...maybe Kerrang..dunno)

I then bought City. Holy shit! Then Ocean Machine...Holy shit, then Infinity...Holy shit! All amazing. After that, I basically bought everything Dev related.

It is a looong story, but I'll tell it anyway.

My first contact to Devy's creations was when I saw a glimpse of Detox (I think it was Detox) and thought "whoah, can someone really listen to this?!".
But part of me was fascinated.. About Dev's unique sound.

Then time passed until 2003.
I was driving around with my "boyf" at the time (we just spent time together, without knowing if we were together or not ) and he found a forest road
(no, it's not like that ) and we decided to see where it goes.

And the road rose to a small hill, where we could see really far away.
Starry sky above us, Deadhead from the stereo..
It was a really BIG moment.

After that Deadhead has given me the biggest goosebumps EVER.
I had my own computer back then, and a "really fast internet" and I would wait for DAYS for songs to load
But they all were worth the wait.
And later I just HAD to own them, of course!
So I've paid for my internet mistakes already ;D
And if I didn't have internet, I doubt I'd ever discover the greatness of these artists I so much love today.

I'm sure your mother is very happy that you discovered Dev, Nathan. All those soiled pants

I used to collect (and still do) a Danish metal magazine called Metalized. One day, I stumbled across a 2-page interview and the headline said "Stressende Stresset Stress" (for you out there who can't speak Danish, I'll give you the headline in English: "Stressed Out Stressing Stress"!).

I said to my self: "Holy crap, what a headline! And this guy looks funny!" and decided to read the interview. Among other crazy subjects, I found out te interview was about this dude's new album (I remember I said to myself: Dude, how is it possible to have "Devin" as your name?), Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing with his band, Strapping Young Lad (once again I said: "Come ooon, you can't have a band name like that!). I still think it's one of the most hilarious interviews I've ever read
Anyways, I decided to check out the music and checked when this issue was published. It was in 1994 or 1995, and at the time I read the interview was in Summer 2001. I went for my local record dealer and asked for the record. Well, they didn't have it, but they could order it for me. After a small discussion with the dealer (Dealer: "Are you sure you want the record? Aren't you a bit too young for this craziness?" - I was 15-16 at the time...), I did!

Eventually, I forgot everything about it when I didn't get the call from the record store.
Until!

Until I hung out at another record store with a couple of friends of mine. (Don' you remember when you were teenagers? Around when you were 15-17 years old? You always hung out at the record stores, walking around your frineds and talking about last weekend when you got seriously drunk after your 4th beer and you were the king of the world?) Suddenly, I saw a record in the metal section (You know, when you hung out at a record store, the only section worth hangning out was the metal section!) - It was black and it was a special edition digipack. It was with Devin Townsend - The crazy guy with the hilarious interview! So I decided to check out the record at the listening area - I didn't leave the headphones for 30 minutes!

So, it was time to leave. I had to go home for dinner. The guy behind the desk asked me: "So, you wanna buy the damn thing? You've been hangning for ages, and I think your friends left..." (later, I found out my friends tried to talk to me, but I was unavailable for the rest of the world...). (One last thing. Remember you were always broke? Your parents didn't want to give you money because you didn't do anything around the house and your bedroom was always a bigger mess than the Middle-East situation?).
Me: "Well, the thing is... I'm broke. Can I have it tomorrow? I promise I'll come!".
And he said: "Okay. But if you don't come tomorrow, you'll have a quarantine for life!"

Off home I went and plagued my parents the whole evening, hoping my persistence could have some effort... After hours and hours of talking and a lots of (probably broken) promises, I got the money for the record!
This was in August 2001.
I remember I was shouting out to everyone when I got out of the record store with "Terria Special Edition" in my hand: "This is the happiest moment of my life!"
A few months after, I saw an ad: Devin Townsend is playing in town the 17th of November! And I was broke...

But that's another story

P.S. By the way, if you happen to have issue # 1 and 13 of the Danish metal magazine "Metalized", please PM me!

I'm sure your mother is very happy that you discovered Dev, Nathan. All those soiled pants

It's a nice break from the semen