Strapping Young Lad "City"

City is the second studio album by Canadian extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad, released on February 11, 1997. Frontman Devin Townsend assembled a permanent lineup of Strapping Young Lad to record the album, 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. The album was re-released in 2007 with several bonus tracks and altered cover art.

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, as well as being majorly influenced by the 1980s Japanese television anime series Dirty Pair as well as Yukito Kishiro's 1990s manga series Battle Angel Alita.

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.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Devin Townsend, except where noted.

1. "Velvet Kevorkian" 1:17
2. "All Hail the New Flesh" 5:24
3. "Oh My Fucking God" 3:34
4. "Detox" 5:37
5. "Home Nucleonics" 2:31
6. "AAA" 5:21
7. "Underneath the Waves" 3:40
8. "Room 429" (Tod Ashley) (Cop Shoot Cop cover) 5:21
9. "Spirituality" 6:34

Recording information:
Engineered at The Mothership, Los Angeles, California, United States.
Overdubs and hell engineered at Red Stripe in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
Mixed at Soundfront in Uppsala, Sweden.
Power editing at Ramons Spaceship.
Mastered at The Cutting Room in Stockholm, Sweden.