About

About Meat Thunderstick

About the Artist

Hi there and welcome to the world of Meat Thunderstick! I'm Devan Thomas — the father of Meat Thunderstick, or at least the one you can blame for it. I'm a 58-year-old Canadian with a lifelong love of music — all music, but especially heavy rock. For me it's always been about the sound itself rather than the personalities behind it. Still, people often want to know the inspirations behind the music, so here's my story.

Music was central to my life from the beginning. My parents, both teachers, made sure of that. My mom taught music for much of her career, while my dad played guitar and piano by ear. The house was always alive with sound, and I was only three or four when I got my first record player. My early collection included Johnny Cash, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Stompin' Tom Connors. At the same time I was taking piano lessons — not from my mom — working through Royal Conservatory books. In school I was listening to Elvis, The Beach Boys, Neil Sedaka, The Guess Who, Bay City Rollers, the Rolling Stones, and BTO, while still absorbing big band, choral, and hymnal music at home.

By grade 5 or 6, my musical horizons started to expand. A trip to the record store changed everything: I discovered Kiss's Alive on 8-track, and from then on I was hooked on heavy music. Iron Maiden entered my life soon after in much the same way, and they've been with me ever since. Around that time I traded my Royal Conservatory scores for Kiss's Alive II sheet music, forcing my piano teacher to adapt — much to their dismay.

High school was a whirlwind of music. I played trumpet in symphonic and stage bands, dabbled in Dixieland, wrote music and lyrics, and DJ'd school events. I explored PA systems, mixing, and lighting, while sneaking off to Toronto's Yonge Street to scour the import bins at Sam the Record Man or A&A Records. My ears were wide open, and I gravitated toward music that was both complex and thought-provoking — Baroque, Rush, jazz, Maiden, or anything in between.

When it came time for university, I faced a fork in the road: pursue music seriously or head into academics. Despite getting into music programs, I chose the latter — maybe knowing I lacked the drive to master a single instrument. I loved playing in bands and building soundscapes more than chasing virtuoso performance. In Toronto I stayed connected — renting keyboards, catching live shows, tinkering with synths like Korgs — but music became more of a passion running alongside my academic and career path.

That path led to a 30-plus-year career in engineering — not the recording kind, but the kind that designs and builds infrastructure. Music never left, though. Now, with more time and a little less work on my plate, I've been able to bring Meat Thunderstick to life. These days I bang out riffs on guitar (badly), run a Boss GT-25 pedal through a 10-watt Marshall, and lay down tracks on a Yamaha MO8 synthesizer — the backbone of much of Meat Thunderstick's sound.

So here we are: a lifetime of influences, experiences, and noisy passion distilled into this project. Thanks for listening — I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I've enjoyed putting it together.

The songs of Meat Thunderstick echo those same crossroads of my life — youthful energy, hard choices, and the grit to keep moving forward. If you listen closely, you'll hear not just heavy riffs but the stories, struggles, and sparks that shaped me along the way.

A Word About AI Music

I'm always surprised by the feedback that I get from friends when I ask them how they liked the songs.  Inevitably, some the responses are "how did you make this"?  That kind of feedback is a little disappointing, because first and foremost, I want people to listen and enjoy the material.  Many of my friends are engineers whose mindset is to figure out how everything works, so I get it.  When they hear that I use AI, though, they seem to immediately conclude that AI does everything and I do nothing.  Yes, AI plays a big part in how I create. But it’s not a one-button shortcut, and it’s certainly not doing all the work. Hopefully, by providing some background here, it will satisfy those who have to know how things are so they can start listening.

For the latest album, Dominion of Ashes (DOA), I started by building the concept and overall story arc before writing a single lyric. I mapped out the key messages and emotional points for each track, along with the tone, pacing, and even the song titles. From there, music and lyrics were written sequentially starting with Signal and going all the way through to Echoes.  As I developed each song and lyric details were established, I’d refine and adjust the overarching story and canonical details were maintained as the songs were completed.

Musically, I play piano, synthesizers, and guitar. Most songs begin on my music production synth, where I sketch the structure, melodies, and rhythm section (bassline and fairly simple drum parts using the synth). Once I’ve got that foundation, I bring it into AI tools with prompts that help expand and shape the sound. The AI might generate new instrumental layers or textures I hadn’t considered which I find really interesting. From there, I re-import the STEMS into my DAW, resample some of those sounds back onto the synth, and rebuild or modify sections to fit my vision.  This has usually involved cutting/pasting/moving/mixing within the DAW, but the AI tools are getting better at doing that and they automatically heal edits, etc. Either way, it’s an iterative process that moves back and forth between human creativity and AI assistance—more like collaboration than automation.

Since I don’t sing, I use AI-based vocal tools to perform the lyrics, though I’m beginning to experiment with new AI voice models that are getting remarkably expressive. Once all the parts are recorded, I handle the final mix myself, balancing and shaping the sound by ear. I’ll then use AI again for mastering, ensuring the track translates well across systems. During the distribution process, the songs often go through one more remaster pass to meet streaming platform standards.

Throughout it all, I keep everything in lossless WAV formats until the very end, only converting to high-quality MP3s (24-bit, 320 kbps) for pre-releases or the website. The goal is always fidelity—to preserve as much of the sound as possible.

AI is simply part of my toolkit, just like a synthesizer or effects rack. It’s a creative partner that helps me bring the music in my head to life. I still write, arrange, perform, and shape every track—it just happens that now, I can collaborate with technology that expands what’s possible. For me, that’s what makes this era of music creation so exciting.