The Way Of The Weird - post 2

A collection of posts about the strange, the unusual, the experimental and the odd in a variety of musical genres.



Voivod - “Dimension Hatröss”
(Noise International 1988)

French Canadians Voivod were a bit of a gateway band for me. Initially considered part of the thrash metal movement, with their first two records borrowing some sonic and compositional traits from Venom, Motorhead and the harder elements that emerged from the NWOBHM, they soon showed that they were much more. Their third album “Killing Technology” (1987) showed a tremendous progression, showing psychedelic and progressive elements, industrial textures and a punky sneer whilst retaining and enhancing their metal roots. That album is my personal favourite as it was a transitional album and as a consequence is a fascinating listening experience. It was also the first full Voivod album I'd heard, having only experienced a couple of earlier compilation tracks, so the impact of the full body of work stayed with me.

And as I say hearing the divergent influences and reading interviews with the members about who they listened to led me to bands I might not have discovered on my own, especially considering I was fully entrenched in the quite conservative Heavy Metal genre at the time. At age 15/16 when this album was released, my tastes were heading towards more extreme and slightly more experimental or crossover records, but a lot of it was still quite safely playing in it's own realm. Chrome, Van der Graaf Generator, Die Kruezen were but three bands that were name checked in interviews with drummer and cover artist Away and who I checked into as a result. Founding (and now former) bassist Jean-Yves 'Blacky' Theriault along with industrial acts such as Einsturzende Neubauten was into the more experimental end of contemporary classical composers such as Ligeti and Penderecki and that allowed and encouraged me to listen further afield. This collision of punk, metal, psych, prog, classical and industrial is what made Voivod special and nowhere is this aural collaboration more apparent than on their 4th album “Dimension Hatröss”. It is a full concept album about the sci-fi exploits of fictional character Korgull (a figure who appeared on their records from the get go) and is split into 2 movements.

So while it's not actually my favourite album of theirs, “Dimension Hatröss” is the one I've been returning to the most of late . It is the one where their sound is fully formed for the first time. It is further refined with the next album, their most commercially successful - “Nothingface” and then given a Power Pop edge with following album “Angel Rat”. In fact, although things started to get a little inconsistent musically and there were various lineup changes (including a few years as a power trio, a period featuring former Metallica bassist Jason Newstead and the unfortunate passing of founding member guitarist and key musical architect Denis 'Piggy' D'amour), there is much to recommend across their entire output. But this album, you could safely say, defines them.



Prologue
1. Experiment
2. Tribal Convictions
3. Chaosmöngers
4. Technocratic Manipulators

Epilogue
5. Macrosolutions to Megaproblems
6. Brain Scan
7. Psychic Vacuum
8. Cosmic Drama