By Your Command

A confluence of science fiction and heavy metal, this track from the Canadian singer/guitarist Devin Townsend runs 8:10, and is often a showstopper at his concerts. "By Your Command" is a saying used in the Battlestar Galactica TV series, which ran from 1979-1980. It was often uttered by the bad guys when accepting orders from their evil overlords. Townsend was a big fan of the show, and integrated it into his Ziltoid project, where he creates his own alien character. "There's that sort of outer space thing that seemed to make sense," he told us. "But really it was a reference back to drugs, and that whole record was a reference to drugs in some sense - that you are unconsciously motivated to go in directions that are either contrary to your nature or maybe not the most accurate representation of where your conscious mind is. Sort of being on autopilot or being a channel to things that ultimately are going to cause you difficulty. So 'By Your Command' had that as an undercurrent, but on the surface it was the introduction to this ridiculous story that the Ziltoid record actually was." (Here's the full Devin Townsend interview.)