off: Voivod story

[MartinPopoff]

Hi folks,
Here's a l'il Voivod story I did in Chart about a year ago . . .


alt.prog.metal.punk.thrash and Voivod
Martin Popoff


Over the charred terrain that once housed, in all its bombastic charm
and revulsion, the gleaming palaces of heavy metal, came a flannel
brigade from the west, followed by moping, anaemic wanderers from
the once Great Britain. Soon it came to be that the rock landscape
existed of nothing more than loud amps and little hands of concrete
(to quote the King), filling the reddened skies with sick puppy songs
of buzzing volume, bad production, bad singing, bad playing, and interesting
enough lyrics (the one thing hard drugs can facilitate). The sad,
sad, streets of Rock'n'Roll Babylon were filled with shuffling, loitering,
stooped-shoulder specimens who whined constantly, couldn't play, didn't
want to learn anything, and never seemed to eat right.



But through the Darwinian battles above ground, the little ol' band
from Quebec toiled on, deep beneath the layers and labels, hatching
record after record of visceral chaos thrash, culminating in a sort
of incubation phase with the sci-fi majestic ugliness of something
called Dimension Hatross. Then things got decidedly spacey, while
still remaining dissonant, crudely carved, and bent over frowns: records
like Nothing Face, Angel Rat and The Outer Limits providing the tunnel
traveller with roadmaps to blinding progressive metal locales one
ought to leave off the family itinerary.



Which brings us to Negatron, the band's bubbling-above-the-crust return
to the angry thrashiness of early Voivodian rants. Mad scientist Michel
Belanger speaks: <169>Obviously it's a little bit of a new chapter.
We're a power trio now (ed. significant addition: Toronto's Eric Forrest
on bass and vocals). We decided to go for a heavier sound similar
to earlier Voivod. The last few featured a lot of experimenting in
the studio, and we got sick of it, putting down all those layers,
doing two and three sessions of pre-production. We really wanted to
be the new Pink Floyd or Rush. So we went for something more spontaneous,
like the first couple of albums, writing the songs, quickly recording
them, letting them be.<170>



<169>People really expected us to break up after Snake left. There
was a lot of negativity, hence the title. I'd been studying nuclear
physics in university, and the negatron was always my favorite particle,
I guess because they're negatively-charged. And we felt that the last
couple of albums were so spaced that it tended to be a little happy
at times. We wanted that paranoid feeling back into Voivod, so we
started to read about mind manipulation and disinformation and conspiracy
theories, and it just lent a really negative feeling to the album.
Also, after Eric joined the band, we started to send demos to people,
and we seemed to get alot of negative comments from friends and not-so-friends
(laughs). And I don't know, it just reminded me of negatrons, circling
around the atom, the atom being Voivod, and the negatrons being those
slimey people. It's all combined; a bit of a reaction. When I was
recording the album, I thought about all those people and it was basically,
we'll show them!<170>



But amongst many of rock's elite (Soundgarden and Red Hot Chili Peppers
included) the band was being appreciated. And Michel took this to
heart. <169>I think it was just a matter of finding influences in
places other than metal. We always listened to other stuff like industrial,
and Bauhaus and classical music, and we tried to incorporate that
into our music. Younger bands who were raised on Metallica, Slayer
and Voivod started to work with more complex structures. And it's
only now with bands like Fear Factory and Sepultura that I see a little
bit of influence. But it was only after hearing that from their own
mouths, that I started to realize it. It's one of the main reasons
that we have a new album out actually. I really wanted to concentrate
on computer graphics and animation, but after discussing it with Pantera
and people like that, I felt like I wanted to be part of it again.<170>



And this newly rejuvenated, sod-bustin' power trio has re-entered
the fray in a big way. Right now there's the headlining tour of Europe
("The crowds are nuts. We even have these people that follow us arround
from show to show. We call them Voidheads."), with date to follow
through North America. Michel also wants to spend more time on his
oblique, sci-fi comics, of which he's going to publish a '76 to '96
retrospective through the fan club in the new year, interspersing
the art with lyrics and bits of poetry. There's also his animation
work on the Insect video, the collaboration with old friend and mutual
fan Jim Thirlwell of Foetus on the track D.N.A. ("His lyrics are so
personal, it was only natural that he sing them himself."), CD Rom
projects, video games, and something the fans have been requesting
for years, the possible return of the Voivod character that thematically
linked the first five records. So climb aboard. Unreality is just
a trip to the record store away . . .
Martin Popoff: martinp at inforamp.net
Power Chord Press (Riff Kills Man!)
P.O. Box 65208, 358 Danforth Ave.
Toronto, Ontario M4K 3Z2