Montreal’s Voivod has long been heralded as an innovative and visionary force within the world of extreme music. For more than 25 years, the band has performed Heavy Metal alchemy by fusing various strains of thrash, punk, hardcore, progressive, and psychedelia to create some of the most engaging, provocative, and, oft times, surprisingly accessible music of their day. Founding members Denis “Piggy” D’Amour (guitar), Denis “Snake” Bélanger (vocals), Jean-Yves “Blacky” Thériault (bass), and Michel “Away” Langevin (drums) started out with the concept of the Voivod, a futuristic warrior/overlord whose exploits would be chronicled in the band’s lyrics and artwork – the latter of which has been created solely by Away.
Over the course of their albums, Voivod has pushed its musical sci-fi story to the end of infinity and re-emerged, reinvented, and revitalized itself countless times over and remains a respected name in circles where quality music and ideas, not gimmicks and trends, are held in high esteem.
The Voivod universe burst into existence in the early 1980s as the fledgling thrash metal movement was just getting under way. Working on a musical diet that consisted of notorious outfits such as Venom, Motörhead, and Mercyful Fate, Voivod began by creating brash, punishing music suffused with the primitive thrust of bulldozer riffs and spitfire vocal howls. Albums such as War and Pain (1984) and Rrröööaaarrr (1986) are raw, apocalyptic blasts of Metal screed – bristling with all the intensity of four youths who, having been cooped up in a practice space for an entire Canadian winter, unleash their restless tensions upon unsuspecting instruments and microphones.
Killing Technology (1987) saw the band refine their sound and expand beyond the influences that their early “faster/louder” material would suggest. Most notable was D’Amour’s transformation into a guitarist whose tempered style was as informed by progressive stalwarts such as King Crimson and Pink Floyd as by any of Heavy Metal’s shred ‘n’ burn class. Dimension Hatröss (1988) further developed the band’s unique style of Cyber Thrash and Nothingface (1989) can be viewed as the logical culmination of everything the band had been striving for to date. Songs such as “Missing Sequences” and “Pre-Ignition” display an angular, surgical paranoia that codifies the ultimate futuristic dystopian fantasy. Where the band could go from here was anyone’s guess. It should serve as no surprise the group took a sharp turn with their next album, Angel Rat (1991).
Straddling alt-rock and metal while still retaining the common DNA that makes it distinctly Voivod, Angel Rat served as a new beginning for a band that was always changing. One change, however, came in an unexpected way when, after the recording of Angel Rat, Jean-Yves “Blacky” Thériault chose to leave the band.
