NOTHINGFACE

After expanding their musical horizons with Killing Technology and Dimension Hatross, Voivod delivers the coup de grace with Nothingface. This album is a prog metal staple that is all too often ignored. Blacky and Away are the tightest they'll ever be here, weighing down the music with odd rhythms. Snake's singing has fully evolved from primal screaming to clean vocals. Then, there's Piggy. Piggy already set himself apart from the rest of the thrash guitarists by attempting to play frets other than the very lowest and very highest. On this album, he all but completely abandons power chords, a sure sign that Voivod isn't the run-of-the-mill thrash band it started out as. His incorporation of jazz to the thrash mold results in a distinctive and fiery playing style.

The songs all contain strong (albeit bizarre) songwriting, and the music seems to be tailor made not to fit any preconceived notion of what a song should sound like. "The Unknow Knows," the sublime "Into the Hypercube," the even better "Missing Sequences," and "Sub- Effect" make up a good portion Voivod's best tunes. The cover of Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Dominé" is, incredibly, more bizarre than the original.

This album would influence very little musicians, but for the precious few that are lucky enough to stumble onto this band, Nothingface remains a pinnacle of experimental metal and a landmark in prog metal. Snake's vocals are the only fly in the ointment, but as with so many lesser vocalists, he's perfect for the band. Hard copies of the album are hard to come by, but the band was recently added on iTunes and this album is reason enough to stop what you're doing, make an account if you have to, and purchase this vital slab of early progressive metal.

Grade: A