City | ||||
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Studio album by Strapping Young Lad | ||||
Released | February 11, 1997 | |||
Recorded | 1996 | |||
Genre | Extreme metal, industrial metal | |||
Length | 39:22 | |||
Label | Century Media | |||
Producer | Devin Townsend, Daniel Bergstrand | |||
Strapping Young Lad chronology | ||||
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Devin Townsend chronology | ||||
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City is the second album by Canadian extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad. It was released on February 11, 1997. The album was re-released in 2007 with several bonus tracks and altered cover art. Frontman Devin Townsend assembled a permanent lineup of Strapping Young Lad to record City, including prolific drummer Gene Hoglan, and Townsend's former bandmates Jed Simon on guitar and Byron Stroud on bass. The album was critically acclaimed with Revolver naming it one of "the greatest metal albums of all time", and it is widely considered Strapping Young Lad's best work.
After releasing the first Strapping Young Lad album, Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing, as a solo album, Townsend recruited a permanent line-up for the second album: Jed Simon on guitar, Byron Stroud on bass and Gene Hoglan on drums.
Devin moved to the UK to work with the Wildhearts, before moving back to Vancouver to work at a restaurant. He then decided to move to LA and "move in with some mutual friends and (I) slept on their couch and wrote "Ocean Machine" and "City.". The album was written about the city of Los Angeles.
City was remastered and re-released in 2007, and included several unreleased tracks, as well as a Japanese bonus track and the video for "Detox". The album was re-released in 2012, and includes a CD version of For Those Aboot to Rock: Live at the Commodore as a bonus disc. Teddy Möller (credited as "Septic Ted") from Loch Vostok appears as a guest saxophonist on the joke-track "Headrhoid".
Bonus track "Centipede" is featured on all versions of No Sleep 'till Bedtime, and samples a percussion loop from "Happiness in Slavery" by Nine Inch Nails.