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Rating: Talking about a band like Voivod is always a bit risky, not because one could ever doubt the quality of the individual musicians involved in this project, but because given the musical proposal and, in general, the whole path taken by the band over the years, one always finds themselves a bit bewildered.
Starting as a thrash metal group with almost punk influences, Voivod (led by the immortal and never too celebrated guitarist Denis "Piggy" D'Amour) have managed over time to combine their raw musical style with progressive rhythms, incorporating cyber elements that give their compositions a futuristic flavor: the album that best represents this pastiche (French for "pasticcio", I haven't become illiterate :) ) was very likely their 1989 work called "Nothingface", which already from the cover, representing the face of an android (robot??) surrounded by "tubes", immediately gives us the sensation of novelty: novelty because it remains, even today, almost impossible to catalog this masterpiece within any predefined genre, as it is thrash, but also progressive, psychedelic and it was the foundation for many cyber-thrash bands that hit the market over the years.
From a musical point of view, "Nothingface" offers well-defined riffs, but never too metallic, with melodic solutions that decisively contribute to giving the album that "spacey" touch, especially thanks to Piggy's solos, aided though by breathtaking bass lines; as for the rhythm section, Thériault and Langevin prefer fairly essential tempos (except for the bass in regard to the previously mentioned melodic lines), sometimes sparse, but in the moments when they weave more complex music, here this rhythmic duo shows the ability to pull out foundations rich in time changes, sustained even at high speed. Then there's the voice, and what a voice: Snake at times is truly the added value of the band, capable of easily ranging from high to low tones, proving to be a great performer (note the Pink Floyd cover in "Astronomy Domine", in which our singer gives his best).
The cyber thrash base of the album then highlights, during the listening, the various tracks all the other aspects of Voivodian music, as can be seen in the first track, "The Unknown Knows", a typical thrash blow with some punk and progressive incursions, or the already mentioned "Astronomy Domine", equipped with a psychedelically effective thrust and vocals that seem to have been filtered, giving the piece greater depth. Another song worth mentioning is the closing piece, "Sub-Effect", surely a foundation for many of the techno and thrash groups that followed Voivod (almost impressive, it seems like being in front of the first sprouts of bands like Spiral Architect, but also bands like Meshuggah or the less core-based Mnemic).
"Nothingface" is objectively not an album suitable for everyone, since our Canadians seem to enjoy disrupting the most common concept of a song, and more generally that of music, but nonetheless, they manage, after repeated listens, to become extremely captivating and why not, even fun.
As for the themes dealt with in the songs, they range from abstract themes concerning the psyche ("Into My Hypercube" is a striking example) to others more focused on futuristic themes, but all the lyrics remain shrouded in an aura of "mystery", often resulting in being impenetrable and difficult to understand.
In conclusion, we are faced with an extremely complex album, both thematically and musically; the work done by the band proves to be always of excellent level, extremely precise and technical, but never too showy.
A masterpiece, therefore, that today still seems to be alone in the musical landscape and has a guaranteed place in the metal masterpieces' Olympus, where I'm sorry, but not everyone can enter.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 The Unknown Knows (05:01)
On this train
Will it always rain?
Try to analyze
This led venture
Songless sky, digital bug-eye
Octogonal seams so much clearer
Indiscrete, status incomplete
To provide me with
Something better
Things come and go
This world is droll
All that I know
The Unknown knows
Talk to me you flying shadows
Wandering into this ozone stew
Keep your myths from the embryos
Who would misconstrue
Anything new
An outright official fiasco
Can you shiled me
From the drastic truth
Times come and go
How dull the flow
All that I hope
The Unknown knows
Have some sign come to me
That I am in their league
Back down to reality
Look about, response is wanting
Events are carefully on display
Common sense, a gift, is given
But mystic mistakes are never made
Suspecting premature daydreams
I surrender to ritual grey
I come and go
Endless approach
I must be close
The Unknown knows
Why all this commotion now?
Stop...wait
I wish I knew the one who knows
Yesterday will come
With tomorrow's sun
And merry-go-round
Stuck on muddy ground
Nineteen yelping fools
Half-wits spouting drool
Half of which have some
The others have none
I knew all along
03 Nothingface (04:13)
May I? May I?
Valves plugs pump to erase
Rictus from my face
Lapse of time
Synchro freeze
Loop rewind
Forward speed
Will to walk
Crossed out feet
Fingers tall
Far from reach
Mind to talk
Still words bleed
Optic box
Melted through
Sonic shock
Silent clue
Drop by drop
Drain-out tube
I hope, I need
I want to dream
Cold choke choke cold
I float unseen
Outside the screen
Cold choke choke cold
A wish, extreme
Awaiting the stream
04 Astronomy Domine (05:30)
Syd Barrett)
Lime and limpid green
The second scene
The fights between
The blue you once knew
Floating down
The sound resounds
Around the icy
Water underground
Jupiter and Saturn
Oberon there on the run
Titanian, Neptune, Titan
Stars get frighten
Winding signs flap
Flicker flicker flicker flap
Pow! Stairways scared
And death rules there
Blindman limpid
Green the sound
Surrounds the icy water on the
Lime and limpid green the sound
Surrounds the icy
Waters underground
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
05 Missing Sequences (05:46)
Sleeping sky
Winding walk
Breezing by
Ravaged rock
Swarming locust-land
Spiders spinning sand
Grubbing enterprise
No time to reply
Down, down
Far underground
Prime spot
Sound, sound
Ten thousand mounds
Live-stock
Stupendous flaking fume
Tremendous dancing doom
Smoke stack spill
Momentous reeking ooze
Enormous creaking crew
Vapour-ville
Neuro-link dementing
Limbo-Inc. Amnesia
I did, I didn't know
I think, I should go, go!
Bio-atrophy
Doxite double-wind
Forgetful retry
Aphasic clouded cult
Synaptic planet pulse
Lost engram
Ellusive mythic doubt
Reactive spastic pause
Dis-programmed
Which was right
Who knows when
Where was that?
Do I know how
Where to go now
Mother lose out
06 X-Ray Mirror (04:28)
Tunnel seems so long
Touching the bottom
A slim reflexion
Punctured my vision
I didn't notice
Beside the last door
Standing on nothing
There was a mirror
Even inside...scrutinized
I am, he is, the face I hate
Refracting cells and prismed self
Who's x who's y in a blank place
I can't believe this is my image
Like the mirror without a frame
Baring a scarred side
Open in daylight
Recoil and reply
Farside of my pride
The introspection
Ruptures the blood core
Magnification
Draws out the mirror
Seeking me out
What will he find?
I am, he is, a repugnant state
I can't shake this curiosity
My privacy starts to fade
I can't believe this is my image
Like the mirror
A polar exchange
He gloating over my fleeting image
He used to be me
He knows who is free
How long will I wait...here
Stuck in this void place...here
I can't believe I am the immage
Within the mirror
Into the chrome lake
The glass is broken
But I look the same
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
07 Inner Combustion (03:47)
Crucible heats up
Arsening, mercury
And acid concoct
Hermetic theory
Hydrogen vapours
Exclusion principle
It's never over
For ever practical
And I try
Throughout time
Any rite
For the sign
Light rebounds
Pure neon
I surround
All am I, I am all
Fluorescent light
Pellucid mineral
Essential dogma
Excludes the logical
Immobile centre
One, two, three for nothing
Projection ponder
Under a raven's wing
Catalyst fusion
Inner combustion
A transmutation
For I am all
08 Pre-Ignition (05:11)
Hey you
Tell me, what's your call name
Closed negative display
Engaged on section three
The acrid factories
You
Putrid perfect product
Proper platinum parts
Proficient prototypes
Steadily spew from these pipes
Are you
Generated by waste
Arid quarry displaced
Environmental squeeze
Aluminum disease
You
Conscious of origin
Intent is in the wind
Atmosphere infected
Descendants defected
Are you
Novel stroke of design
Or relics from this mine
Casually choke
Noxious nourishment
Embodied illicit cure
Ground and rock and sand
Come crumble tumble down
Grinding round
The hydraulic wheel
Extraction
The ultimate greed
Now... hidden from view
Surveying stable shifts
A feeble groove
Unintentional split
Then they return to work
As if they're not disturbed
Cybernetic beings
Omniscent regiment
Thriving with vigor
Incessant loom
An assumed order
Auspicious tool
Franticly flow
Spumous sediment
Remedied, neurotic fuse
Ground and rock and sand
Come crumble tumble down
Yonder sound an echoing gong
Disjunction
Of their disowned gods
Now... some are set free
Emotions flood their gaze
Synthetic breed
The pre-ignition phase
Pre-ignition
Flares up in you
Pre-ignition
Provokes me too
09 Into My Hypercube (05:04)
In my backyard
Sounds turn around
Down fall apart
In my playground
In my dome on my own
A locked throught in a closet
Splinter moves, cracking moans
Dank angles in the attic
Sixth sense stockpiled
In the cellar
And the ladder is broken
Memories sleep in dust
This shelter is doubtful
Blind windows, flat eyes
Stitched tight into time
Til I rise unbound
Transient illusion
Clairvoyant suspension
Translucid condition
Principal connection
Rise high, rise higher
Shing shallow spirit shadows
Tumult in the dark
Telestrobic heart
Murmur of the muse
Whispering amused
Fulfilling this square
Circled in my lair
Am I not awake
This ever forever
Perhaps faulty premonition
Perhaps this doesn't change anything
But for certain
I will be hanging around
Nether falling
Wisdom's dipping
Spiral stairway
Logic's dripping
Silent squeeze, shrinking scene
This remains my domain
Grave intrigue, I'm relieved
All these stains left unnamed
Grinches snicker, sneer at he
Like grinning Cheshire cats
Running amuck, mad, crazy
This cuboid upside down cell
10 Sub-Effect (04:29)
The one go down is alive
It is part of my flight
The one inside makes a sign
And keeps an eye to the light
I sense panic overboard
Obscure, viscid sprawling fog
I hear a sonar rumour
That says I'm far from the shore
How I am stricken with non-emotion
It crawls up above
Persicopic cognition
WHere it strives to dwell
In abnormal contortion
I navigate in my maze
Investigate to be safe safe safe
Across the ocean
Of sheer compromise
There is no matrix
Not even a guide
The last wave of sanity
Rolls over my frequency
Skyline under water field
The depths above the high seas
A twilight house keeper
Dim-on, dim-off now
A concrete cyclops
Blinking down his dull eye
Does this code signal
Something somewhere somehow?
Why me? It goes on and on and on
Please no
Too late for S.O.S.
Mute island, fish-eye view
Circling the border line
No resource, no rescue
I'm stranded, I'm otherwise
The error is perfect
Like this sub-effect
Of my mind... my mind
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By Rooster
Voivod have not forgotten their origins, and once again manage to bring forth that sci-fi nightmare amid the nuclear wreckage of a crumbling post-industrial society.
Nothingface is a work to be appreciated as a whole, capable of making one live the psychotic environment, the virtual odyssey it describes of a drifting world.
