Originally posted by E V I L
Can anyone give a more informative view?
Glad to. As I've said before, the 4 "cornerstones" of my musical tastes are Opeth, Dan Swano, Devin Townsend, and Frank Zappa, so I obviously hold the two artists in question in VERY high regard. Fortunately, since they both seem to be quite the "project" artists, the two are quite comperable.
(note: Devin is from right here in my hometown, I got the chance to meet him once, briefly, so I feel the need to plug a little)
Devin is a musical genius, and like most geniuses, he borders on insanity. One has to look no further than the stories of his mental breakdown during the making of the wholly remarkable
Infinity to see this. He is imaginative in both his composing of music and his utilization of audio of all kinds, neither (my favourite non-Opeth album EVER) Ocean Machine: Biomech nor Terria would be the same without all of the samples and effects, all used to, as their name suggests, great effect.
Dan is a musical mastermind, and just LOVES music. He is easily the most prolific artist of the 1990's (at least of those known for the metal genre) and has released quality albums over a great range of styles, from the very soft Symphonic Prog Rock of Unicorn, to the harder Prog Rock of Nightingale, to the reasonably melodic death metal of Edge of Sanity, to the Swedish uber-DeathMetal band, Bloodbath (with the insane experimental and extreme Pan-Thy-Monium, the Odyssey mini-CD, the 70's prog-meets-death-metal goodness of his self-titled Moontower album, and a whole bunch of stuff I haven't heard yet like Route 9 and Subway Mirror all thrown in for good measure - note to self: must order those...) . To me, what makes Dan so special is his ability to maintain exceptional quality
over vast quantity. Whether he puts out one record a year or 20, if the name "Swano" is in the credits it's bound to be pretty damn good, even if not quite
as good as albums with the name "Devin Townsend". I think that with the exception of Zappa (another discussion altogether) I own more albums made by Dan Swano than any other artist, but Devin has produced albums (Ocean Machine, Infinity, Terria) that I hold to be of that special "higher level". (I love Nightingale to death but none of the three albums by themselves reach that. Crimson, on the other hand, is probably the best death metal album ever, should we exclude Opeth)
I agree somewhat that Dan's music tends to be slightly more generic. He possesses great skill and talent and tremendous drive derived from his sheer love of music, but Townsend, well, is a genius.