Canadian crazy Devin Townsend has created a singular entity in the clattering, monolithic industrial-metal Strapping Young Lad. Recalling both the polyrhythmic insanity of Meshuggah and Fear Factory’s machine metal, CHAOS YEARS collects 17 tracks of the band’s prime material, spanning avowed classics like CITY and ALIEN. Their dark, sooty noise, subtly colored by absurd humor, takes improbable twists and turns on dystopian epics such as “All Hail the New Flesh,” the thrash-indebted “Rape Song,” and the weirdly poppy “Satan’s Ice Cream Truck.” Strange and vertigo inducing, Strapping Young Lad can darken the very sky with their complex, cerebral assault.

Rovi