VOIVOD

I honestly did not expect the band to persevere after guitarist Piggy's passing, especially considering he was essentially the backbone of the band's unique sound. Bringing in Chewy, though, as their new guitarist and getting their original bassist Blacky back in the fold has not only kept the band going, but revamped the band with a new sense of energy. If they could add a full-time keyboardist named Bunny and a saxophone player named Spanky, then they'd really be all set, but as for now, Voivod are officially back doing what they are best known for, which is their brand of cyberpunk metal with lots of tritone chord progressions meshing with some Pink Floyd and Rush influences.

And I dig it. Right off the bat, the music harkens back to their late 80's golden age, channeling aspects of everything from Killing Technology through Nothingface. Chewy was no doubt a fan of that era of the band growing up, and especially Piggy's rhythm techniques, thus his contribution to the band's current sound has such a strong vibe of works like Dimension Hatross that Target Earth almost feels like some lost recording from 1988.

Soundwise all instruments are clearly discernable, including Blacky's heavily distorted bass licks. Many of these tunes have abundant tempo and time signature shifts, as tracks like "Kaleidos" can attest, which must be a chore to pull off on stage. This is definitely some of their busiest and most difficult material since Nothingface, and yet these songs never lose themselves into convoluted riffs tossed together willy-nilly. They are catchy and memorable to the point where I was whistling parts of the somewhat psychedelic "Warchaic" long after my first listen. Although the overall sound is somewhat constant, the speed and attitudes vary from track to track, with slow trippy passages complimenting thrashier d-beat backed riffs.

Snake the singer is another key factor in Voivod's vision, providing vocals that are really hard to classify except that they work perfectly with the cyberpunk and space-rock mentality. A bit rougher in tone these days, bringing back a bit of that Killing Technology 'throatiness' while retaining his detached, cool demeanor, Snake still has a commanding presence, although during the first track at key moments there's some effects tacked on to his lyric dispensing that causes him to sound like Dave Mustaine with a stuffed nose (not a particularly good thing) that luckily aren't repeated later during the album's running time.

These guys should feel proud of what they achieved here. While a whole lot of heavy bands from the 80's continue to pump out new garbage under their flagship name just to play their old tunes during metal festival tours and whatnot, Voivod actually captured what made them great back in the day and revitalized that sound for this age. It can be debated as to whether a band mining almost entirely into its back catalogue for inspiration can be considered a 'progressive' act, even if that old material defined the group hitting a creative stride, but in this case I wouldn't bother. I'm just enjoying this stuff.

This is Voivod for now, and these crazy Canadians show no sign at all of slowing down. It is quirky at times, extremely staccato at others, yet always in your face and a real refusal to compromise. I have most of Voivod's albums and take it from me this maintains all that they have stood for over the years, while giving us metalheads something else to savour. www.centurymedia.com

1) God Phones-4 2) From the Cave-2 3) Earthache-3.5 4) Global Warming-4 5) A Room With a VU-3.5 6) Destroy After Reading -1.5 7) Treasure Chase-3 8) Krap Radio-2.5 9) In Orbit-2 10) Deathproof-3 11) Pyramidome-3.5 12) Morpheus-4 13 Volcano- 2.5

3 stars overall

There's still some elements of thrash present, particularly with the drumming which bounces about between spacey grooves and fast tempos augmented with double bass pedaling. But man, there's a truly strange aural experience going on here, mostly due to Denis d'Amour's wildly adventurous chord progressions that tap into some sort of futuristic fusion metal sound. When I bring up fusion in this case, I don't mean in the sense of those extreme metal bands that pummel away until suddenly shifting into some loungy jazz piece before getting all heavy again. The jazziness in Nothingface is inherent throughout the album due to the nature of the music as a whole, with the bass guitar absolutely necessary and up front to anchor the music while the guitar explores tritone textures and dissonant passages that still retain an appealing smoothness.

Another important aspect of this album is Denis Belanger. On this album, his vocals stand out as an original and rare blending of alternative, punk and space rock stylistics...eschewing the snarly yelling of his full throttle thrash days. As a result, the album, though clearly metal in instrumentation, doesn't necessarily feel like a metal album, but almost like some heavy space rock album with elements of metal music woven into the songs. It's quite strange and to this day not often mimicked.

The most important thing to note, however, is that these songs are generally quite entertaining. Tracks like "The Unknown Knows" and "Inner Combustion" are punchy with some cool cyberpunk attitude, and a track like "Into My Hypercube" adds softer passages with agreeable melodies and interesting lyrics. My personal favorite would be the final cut, being "Sub Effect", with its fantastic opening couple of minutes provided by the jerky rhythms and the singer's unique tone...like a tough & mean version of that Violent Femmes guy. There's also that tripped out break with jangly distant guitars two thirds of the way through that number that's just a great insert into the song while not being jarring.

The cover of Astronomy Domine deserves mention as well; being one of the better Pink Floyd covers I've heard with some spot-on guitar playing. A few of the other tracks such as "Pre-Ignition", while fine enough in their own right, don't resonate as well as others, and as the album wears on, it can feel a bit "same-y" on a few occasions despite being a complete anomaly in the metal world. Still, it was quite a release back in the day, and still has few peers even now. An excellent work overall.

Piggy's guitar riffs really piled on the dissonance, which actually gave these songs an extra richness and all-encompassing vibe. The rhythms are generally fast and aided by lots of D- beat drum beats and general bashing, but there's a whole new level of complexity displayed in songs like the brilliant "Forgotten In Space" with some definitive proginess disrupting the thrash flow of the album.

It's still essentially a thrash album, but one of the most complex and intricate ones of it's time, and certainly unique not just for utilizing proggish aspects, but retaining a punkish vibe throughout the proceedings as well with Snake's snarly vocals and that aforementioned D- beat drumwork. Throw in full on dystopian sci-fi lyrics and some kickin' bluesy solos and you have an album with a whole slew of different influences forming one unique vision.

I used to own this on vinyl, which omitted the leftover tracks "Too Scared To Scream" and "Cockroaches", which honestly are the two tracks I could easily live without. The other songs, though, are killer, with "Overreaction"'s ferocity and "Forgotten In Space"s adventurousness within the thrash metal confines being essential tracks.

This is one of those bold move albums that either draws people closer or repulses them from the band. Or should I say revolts them? For my tastes however, this album is quite attractive in sound.

The reasons often cited for disliking this album: new vocalist Eric Forrest is nowhere nearly as interesting and unique as founding vocalist Denis Belanger; Jean-Yves Theriault isn't playing bass on this; the guitars are just a wall of sound.

It's usually disappointing when certain band members we have come to love leave the band and the new members can't replace what was lost. But given the direction that Voivod was heading through the period of Angel Rat and Outer Limits, I think it was a daring and bold move to take the new band in the direction of Negatron and Phobos. On the other hand, the band had been moving away from their speed metal roots and these two more recent albums remind us that this is where the band came from. If the last album you heard was Killing Technology and then picked up Phobos ten years later, you would likely not be surprised by the sound nearly as much as by the line-up change.

I actually find this album really interesting to listen to, though I usually prefer to listen to a few individual songs like Phobos, Bacteria, Neutrino, and Forlorn than the whole album straight through. The album is bookended by two sound effect instrumentals Catalepsy and Catalepsy II, which are on their own not much but being there they give the album a sense of conceptualization, a sense that is enforced with the bizarre and sometimes creepy sound effects that link the songs. You will also note that most tracks have a one-word title, further creating the idea of a theme.

There is little variety in the music. Almost every song is like being whacked by a giant tennis racket of distorted guitar, and given Denis D'Amour's penchant for weird and dissonant chords, that sensation of being clobbered is only stronger. The pace of the songs usually varies between doomy space extreme metal and a careening battleship of rapid-paced space speed metal. The songs do find time to fit in some interludes from the mayhem of sound with creepy undistorted guitar with spooky cosmic effects or abrupt tempo changes at times. The vocals are powerful screams from a terribly scratched throat - very much suiting the music - but sometimes they are distorted too and the lyrics are difficult to distinguish. That's a weak point for me. The music overwhelms the vocals.

Two tracks that stand out for me because of the mood they establish are the instrumental Temps Mort and Neutrino. Temps Mort is a solemn and grim piece that reminds me a bit of something from Nine Inch Nail's The Downward Spiral but with accordion played by drummer Michel Langevin. It has a strong post apocalyptic atmosphere but with a folksy European touch. It's a welcome interlude from the sonic assault that composes most of this album. Neutrino has such a sparse but hideously creepy intro. The image that comes to my mind is of some enormous space creature hammering on the hull of a doomed spacecraft while the crew inside are frozen with fear. It gives me the shivers each time I hear it, a great example of how even heavy metal can create images with music.

I was surprised to discover Voivod on this site at first because I believed at first that progressive rock was more like Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant and the likes. While this album is not Voivod's most progressive work, I think they have - as they usually seem to do - embraced a style of music and put their own unique stamp on it. I have not heard an album that sounds similar to this and usually when Voivod do anything, they do it with their own special twist. I do believe it has progressive elements, but this is tech/extreme prog metal here so unless that's your bag, you should stay away. If you love the classic Voivod then you should approach this with caution. If you want to hear something that will at first give you the feeling of listening to an extremely harsh hangover but later make you feel like you've just heard an album by a Sith Lord's evil twin's metal band, this might just appeal to you.

The first three tracks are just about flawless in execution with a wide variety of everything that's unique and exceptional about the band. There's a plethora of time signature changes and bizarre chord sequences, but there's also some cool bluesy little solos that pop in here and there to add a bit of coolness to the proceedings. Track 5 is another sheer winner, powerful, monstrous yet inventive, melodic and damn catchy while being very much progressive. Brain Scan starts of brilliantly, but does get a bit goofy at times, although the jazziness of it all is rather appealing in retrospect.

I'll never be able to give this album a perfect score due to a few flaws concerning Denis' vocals on certain tracks. The "WE'RE GOIN' NOWHEEAAAAARRRE" sections of "Technocratic Manipulators" are sung with an incredible whine that rivals Billy Corgan at his most ridiculous. I always found that "Psychic Vacuum" had some intersting ideas but as a whole seemed rather sloppy, and the final 'real' track has that hilarious robot voice blabbing about psychic power that throws me right out of the music's atmosphere. The Batman theme song was tacked on much later by distributors or whatnot, and really has no place in this album, although it's kind of fun in an ipod shuffle or something.

What I like about this album most, and what sets it apart to me, is how successfully the band utilized the studio, limited keyboard effects and enthusiastically odd songwriting to capture such a science fiction resonance while not sacrificing their speed and heaviness. To this day it remains one of those metal albums that's strange enough to appreciate but few have tried to emulate.

This is the kind of metal band that plays on metal festivals and most of the headbangers go away, because they don't know how to handle this strange kind of metal. Only some fanatic progressive-minded metalfans stay and are having the time of their lives! This did really happen when I saw Voivod on a Dutch metal festival. This record was my only knowledge of this band at the time and I did really enjoy the show. Voivod played several songs of this record and I was really surprised that their last song was a metal cover of Astronomy Domine of Pink Floyd; I didn't know this was one of their greatest hits!

This highly technical metal band still have some catchy moments, especially on side one which is my favourite side. Denis Belanger seemed to be the perfect vocalist for this band. His vocals are different then most vocalists in the trash metal genre and have something in common with punkvocalists. This fits quiet well in this anarchistic metal act. Within the strange rhythms in all pitch spectrums there are also some technical solo's. This band just really knows how to handle this complexity!

The second side contains some less catchy riffs and that's why I'll stick to the four star rating. This record is recommended for metal fan's with a affinity for complexity and avant-garde approaches.

For whatever reason, there came a point in Voivod's career where everything went to hell. up until 'The Outer Limits', Voivod were releasing album after album of classic, engaging, and even groundbreaking material, turning the thrash metal world on its side with a spacey, forward-thinking approach. Sadly, Voivod's vocalist Snake Belanger leaves after an impressive tenure with the band, and in comes his replacement, Eric Forrest. Not to mention that Voivod is just a three-piece at this point, the band has all but split up for all intents and purposes. What is left is a hollow shell of a band that once created some of the best albums metal has ever seen. Although the band would eventually pick themselves back up with Snake's return, 'Negatron' and its follow-up 'Phobos' represent the darkest period of Voivod's career.

AWhile band members have changed, so has the style. The music here would be completely unrecognizable from Voivod's signature prog-thrash sound, were it not for Piggy's distinct style of playing. Incidentally, Piggy's dissonant edge is the best thing about 'Negatron'. As for the rest, Voivod has gone down a fairly lo-fi avenue, throwing away their growing sense of melody in exchange for aggression and noise. In a sense, it is quite like Voivod's two earliest albums, but as all 'back-to-roots' albums usually end up, it doesn't possess the same power. Eric Forrest's contributions are the biggest disappointment. Although some of his vocals manage to get a strong aggression across, he usually sounds like he is trying to scream parts that should have been sung by Snake. Perhaps this is just a fan's bias, but the music feels the loss.

'Negatron' is a darker album than much Voivod work, and that does work to its benefit. I think that the style they chose to go in here is not inherently bad, but the uninspiring songwriting and lackluster ideas lead the album down a path to mediocrity that is best left forgotten by Voivod and their fans.