Voivod
Lives

THE REVIEW

I have just returned home, in the unbearable heat of these last weeks.

Back from the new excursion that saw me reach the CAI Andolla Refuge in the late morning, high in Valle Antrona at over 2000 meters of altitude. The peace of the senses, enveloped as always by the imposing silence of the mountains; and throughout the duration of my ascent, I had this work in mind. Immense mountains and immense the Canadian Voivod.

It’s only right to tell you about the album, without even putting my weary body under a necessary shower. I may have time later, perhaps...

It's the “Negatron” tour; we are in the spring-summer of 1996; the first four tracks were recorded in the Netherlands at the Dynamo Open Air Festival. The remaining seven in that place of absolute reverence called CBGB in New York (and here the memory inevitably leans towards the RAMONES who in the small and smoky club laid the foundations of their myth in the mid-seventies).

First official live of Voivod after an already long career that has seen them as protagonists with a series of albums that made the history of Metal.

The power trio is a post-war residue of the stellar Thrash wars of the eighties; obsessed with science fiction, the war of the worlds, and everything that revolves around these seismic affairs. In their musical journey, they have created a completely unique and unrepeatable sound, starting from a very fast, sinister, and convulsive Punk-Thrash; reaching, with the records of the nineties, a hybrid form of Prog-Metal with bizarre and very sick Psychedelic inserts.

The original singer Snake has temporarily left the band; the vacant spot is filled by the competent Eric Forrest who does not possess the vocal flexibility of his predecessor. This is the only minimal flaw of an otherwise granitic work overflowing with post-metallic forays, with a further hardening of the band’s sound.

Eleven healthy and violent blows that open with the Heavy spatiality of “Insect” where the guitar of the late Piggy stands out as a protagonist right away. We go back in time because it’s the turn of the auditory earthquake with the name “Tribal Convictions”: a ferocious dark and penetrating ride taken from “Dimension Hatross” (for me the best album of the Canadians). Fury knows no limits or pauses as other very dark pearls from their distant past are played: “Nuclear War”, “Ravenous Medicine”, “Voivod”. True pagan anthems of stunning and sadistic beauty.

It closes with the cover of “In League With Satan” by Venom: an indispensable track of another Metal legend...PLANET HELL...

Diabolos Risng 666.