Devin Townsend Says Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger Is ‘More of a metalhead’ Than He Is

Grywnn, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
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During a recent interview with Ultimate Guitar, Devin Townsend spoke about working with Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger; Chad was a special guest on Devin’s album Empath.

While talking about the Nickelback singer, Devin shared that he thinks Chad is “phenomenally intelligent,” while also commenting on how much of a rockstar the guy is.

Townsend says the rockstar life is not for him, but that he is blown away by Kroeger. He also admits that the Nickelback frontman is “much more of a metalhead” than he is.

Here is everything Devin had to say about working with Chad:

“Chad’s brilliant. Chad is a phenomenally intelligent human being. But he’s a rockstar, too, on levels that you and I will never participate in. And so there’s gonna be a disconnect just based on that. You only have a few things in common, and then, after a while you run out of things to talk about.

“I think it was flattering for me at first, too. But again, guy’s got a very complex life, and I can’t understand a lot of it. How could I? It’s not within the realm of my world. But I think he’s exceptionally talented. I think he’s phenomenally intelligent.

“And I think that there’s a certain degree of intensity to his life that I just can’t hang with, man. It’s too much for me. For every hour of social activity, I need two hours on my own to recover.

“And there’s other people, and a lot of them are the people that end up being at that level of success that are never enough. You play a concert in an arena, and then you go to a club, and then you go parish sailing, and then you drink all night. And I’m like, ‘I can’t do it.’ I hate it.

“Even if I respect and care for people, after a certain amount of time, again, I have to tap out. I’m like, ‘Dude, I can’t hang with this.’ I’m in bed by nine, usually. I don’t want to listen to Pantera at four in the morning, you know?

“And that’s not a character flaw at all, it’s just a different frequency that folks like that exist on. I’m not like that. But sometimes it takes experiences with folks like that to know that. Maybe you think you can hang, and then you get there.

“And I mean, with Chad, I remember being at his house a couple times, and just being, ‘Wow, this is so intense, man.’ He had a stage set up, and it’s metal all night. And I’m thinking like, ‘Man, you are so much more of a metalhead than I am.’ But I do care for him. And I think he’s brilliant.”

It sounds like the guys in Nickelback are quite the metalheads!

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