Voivod

Around the mid-Eighties, while thrash metal reigned supreme in the hearts of metalheads, with death and black metal extremism waiting in the wings, ready to assault the ears of less hardened listeners with growing regularity, bands like Switzerland's Celtic Frost and Canada's Voivod took it upon themselves to push metal's boundaries beyond fences that, in some respects, could already be considered classic. While the former consciously steered the genre toward avant-garde territory with albums such as “To Mega Therion” (1985) and “Into The Pandemonium” (1987), the latter transfigured that experimental tension into dystopian, science-fiction visions, reaching the peak of their musical art on “Dimension Hatröss” (1988) and “Nothingface” (1989).

Formed in 1982 in Jonquière, in the Canadian province of Québec, out of the shared passions of drummer Michel “Away” Langevin and guitarist Denis “Piggy” D'Amour, Voivod took stable shape as a quartet with the arrival of singer Denis “Snake” Bélanger and bassist Jean-Yves “Blacky” Thériault, who were initially convinced their path lay in the nascent speed-metal scene. Over time, though, they found themselves digging through their influences, coming up with a mix of thrash metal, new wave/post-punk, progressive rock and Pink Floyd-style psychedelia, but above all, thanks to Langevin's imagination, they began building their music in the shadow of Morgoth, a desolate land ruled by ice and perpetual war.

This was the perfect setting for the exploits of the warrior Voivod, a figure Langevin had first sketched out at around age ten, after already devouring a fair number of science-fiction and horror books, including Bram Stoker's “Dracula” and J. R. R. Tolkien's “The Lord of the Rings.” Over the years, and after surviving a serious car accident unscathed, that precious product of his imagination would mature in the shadow of reflections on the relationship between biology, technology and mechanics, finding further inspiration in the paranoia of the Cold War, fueled by films such as “Mad Max” (1979), “Blade Runner” (1982) and “The Day After” (1983), which had also weighed heavily on the development of the aesthetics and music of bands like Joey DeMaio's Manowar and young Peter Steele's Carnivore, just to name a couple.

At first, though, the world of Voivod served young Langevin as a way to make sense of the grayest days of his adolescence: “I had a lot of psychological problems, so I used that kind of world to counteract what I was going through. (…) I learned to control my schizophrenic nature and express it creatively through some new and original ideas. When we joined forces, we agreed it would be cool to have the ancient legend of Voivod as our trademark, just as we agreed to use his world as a concept, also because it was something different from what characterized the metal bands of the time, who were either Satanist or all about sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. With every record, we kept developing the concept, showing our progression both in thought and in music.”

It was with the debut "War And Pain" (back in 1984) that Langevin (known to everyone by now simply as Away, since his mind always seemed to be elsewhere) was able to put that intuition into practice, and it was no coincidence that this first Voivod LP dealt with themes such as nuclear holocaust and everything that comes with it in terms of impact on human lives, even if the music was still at the mercy of a very chaotic and raw speed-thrash, almost lo-fi I'd say, albeit driven by an unstoppable passion.

The record caused quite a stir among the metalheads of the time (forty thousand copies sold in a couple of years: trust me, that wasn't a small number back then for a band that was, after all, still largely unknown!), despite - or perhaps precisely because of - the accusations of Nazism/fascism that some industry insiders, stirred up by lyrics packed with wars and weapons, repeatedly hurled at them.

Despite this relative commercial success, Voivod didn't really gain much from it, since the deal they'd signed with Metal Blade was practically a rip-off contract. So the young Canadians decided to cut their ties and seek shelter with Combat Records, through whom they released the more polished "Rrröööaaarrr" (1986), which showcased a more structured and powerful sound.

Meanwhile, Langevin's mind had once again given birth to something new, creating the monstrous figure of Korgull, born from a cross between Voivod and a tank.

But the record that would definitively project Voivod's sound into the territory of a "technical" progressive thrash-metal was the following "Killing Technology", released in 1987, which carried with it a whole series of reflections on the dark side of technological progress and on the leaden pall that the Cold War (a side note: the album was recorded in a Berlin still divided by the Wall) had by then long since cast over all of humanity.

Also not to be underestimated was the impact that the recent explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear plant had on the band (April 26, 1986): once again, scenarios of destruction, disease and death stirred within their minds, this time with almost unbearable clarity.

Realizing that the "Killing Technology" experience had charted rather original coordinates, Voivod delved deeper into its themes and sounds with the eight tracks of "Dimension Hatröss", a work whose imagery was outlined by Langevin in a 1988 interview with Borivoj Krgin for "Metal Forces": "The whole story revolves around an experiment taking place in the laboratory of Voivod (the creature, not the band!), during which he creates a completely new dimension - like a small galaxy - and then enters it to observe the evolution of its inhabitants. The story is made up of eight chapters, with each song representing a different part, and it's more or less a reflection of what's happening in our world and of what we think might happen to our species".

Beyond evoking the risks that science runs when it "plays" at being God (risks which, it should be stressed, are necessarily bound up with its very essence, especially considering that science now thinks of itself - thanks in no small part to the winks of philosophical thought - as a field of action essentially without limits), the "completely new dimension" generated by Voivod's mind is an extremely unstable micro-universe, in which oppression, suffering and misery end up multiplying their impact on humanity. In this sense, in this "small galaxy" Voivod is the man-God of Technology grappling with the most dire implications of his own creations.

The making of the follow-up to "Killing Technology" unfolded in two stages. In the first, the pre-production phase, the four friends, holed up in the apartment they shared at the time in a Montreal neighborhood, worked tirelessly on the new songs, practically sleeping among cables, amplifiers and instruments. The atmosphere turned out to be particularly charged, given that this same apartment was located above a strip club frequented by a gang of not-exactly-trustworthy bikers, with whom our heroes ended up clashing after having the less-than-brilliant idea of drilling a hole in the floor and running a microphone through it to listen to what was going on right beneath their feet. When the bikers got furious, they managed to get off the hook, but only because Blacky had the bright idea of telling them a tear-jerking story about his hamster, which he claimed had gotten lost inside the wall...

Having left Canada behind, the band then flew to West Berlin, where they were expected at the Music Lab studios to finally lay down the grooves of "Dimension Hatröss". In what was then the capital of West Germany, Voivod took their music to a new level, and this was possible above all thanks to their discovery of electronics and the influence that certain industrial bands (first and foremost the German outfit Einstürzende Neubauten) had on them.

"Suddenly, we weren't the old thrash band anymore. For us, it was the beginning of something new and exciting", Langevin would later recall. So new, in fact, that the drummer, repeatedly called upon to define the sound of his creation, had no small difficulty pinning down an adequate label, since Voivod's music was "the result of many great influences", ranging from their early classic-metal loves (Judas Priest, Motörhead and Venom, above all), to the raging hardcore of G.B.H. and Discharge, by way of the more or less eccentric post-punk of Killing Joke and Chrome, the progressive compositions of King Crimson, Van Der Graaf Generator and Rush, all the way to the fusion of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra.

In any case, a label like "science-fiction music" suited Langevin just fine, especially when compared to the ones some critics had meanwhile taken it upon themselves to coin, things like "nuclear metal", "industrial metal" and "space punk".

Recorded between December 4, 1987 and January 4, 1988, produced by Harris Johns, who had already backed the band on "Killing Technology" and who boasted some notable productions in the metal field (including Helloween's "Walls Of Jericho" and Kreator's "Pleasure To Kill"), "Dimension Hatröss" (distributed at home by Maze Records and in the rest of the world by Noise Records) comes wrapped in one of the most iconic metal album covers of the Eighties (once again the work of Langevin himself), depicting the usual Korgull, whose body, however, has by now transformed into a mechanical device set against a background reminiscent of an extremely radioactive sun.

The grim image of the original Korgull (the one, that is, that appeared on the cover of "Rrröööaaarrr") was by now just a memory, and this also marked a definitive break from Voivod's musical past - a band that, for many (this writer included), reached its creative peak precisely within the grooves of "Dimension Hatröss", one of the most important records for the evolution of metal in all its forms.

But there's more: "Dimension Hatröss" was also one of those records that helped erode the widespread conviction that metal was a crude, "unintelligent" genre, showing instead that a great wellspring of creativity lurked within its folds too — one capable, in the years to come, of echoing through even the most unlikely artists (to name one, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth has always had kind words for Voivod, and especially for "Dimension Hatröss").

I remember when we first listened to the album, it was a very exciting moment. We knew it was something different from what was around at the time, but we never thought it would have such an enormous impact

(Denis "Piggy" D'Amour)

From its very first track, "Experiment", it's clear the band managed to perfectly fuse, with utterly original touch, their thrash roots, their desire to go "progressive", and the sci-fi imagery that Langevin kept tirelessly carving out of his fervid imagination. Voivod's sound is icily chaotic, one in which Piggy's innovative riffing (far from any wish to flaunt technical speed, and instead bent on forging an utterly original synergy between dissonance and swirling bursts), Snake's detached, vaguely android tone (though always brushed by a burning passion), and Langevin's precise, hammering drumming build arrangements that were absolutely unprecedented for the time.

Lyrically, "Experiment" is split into two parts: in the first, Voivod uses a particle accelerator to create a small energy field resembling a new world ("All I need is a new world/ Create my universe": this new universe is, evidently, the very same "dimension hatröss"*), while in the second they venture into it.

I think I’ve found the way

I wanna move not stay

Time is fast and so unsafe

Conquest is what I can expect

Without frontiers there's no respect

The less you give the more I take

That Voivod were by now sailing well beyond the pillars of Hercules of the most experimental metal is confirmed, indeed reinforced, by the following "Tribal Convictions", which arrives with tribal drumming and slashing guitar work, thus committing itself to a sonic vision in which the "primitivist" enthusiasm of their early work (see, in this regard, the speed-metal tracks of the second half) collides head-on with the more sophisticated solutions of their new course (again in the second half, from 3:55 onward you can hear what practically sounds like Rush teleported into a distant future). The "tribal convictions" belong to the first living beings Voivod encounters in the "dimension hatröss", who, on the strength of those very convictions, end up regarding and worshipping as a God what is, in their eyes, a strange and unsettling presence. For those beings, faith in Voivod ultimately becomes necessary to justify their own violence and bloodlust.

They're searching for something

Something to believe in…

Their convictions

Blood effusion

Is it a crime

Their convictions

Self-destruction

"Chaosmongers" could well be the banner under which to gather the whole Voivod adventure, true "promoters of Chaos" (as the title translates), since the track is one of the most complex and fascinating on "Dimension Hatröss", its madness masterfully built around a frenzy that betrays the band's punk-hardcore past and which, once again, is bent into a trajectory channeling various shifts in tempo and mood, while the listener sinks into an abyss of destruction, where the "chaosmongers" — who are also terrorists with anarchist leanings ("Direct strategy/ Against authority") — are ready even for the ultimate sacrifice, and to "tolerate" the occasional mistake ("The chaosmöngers/ Prefer to get away/ When people fall down/ But they killed the wrong ones"), all so that humanity might still hope for a better future.

The crossover excitement of “Technocratic Manipulators”, modulated through a whirlwind interplay of agglutination and vibrant blasts, gives way, just before the two-minute mark, to a spatial-hued excursion that could be described as the sudden decision of Hawkwind to pack their bags and set off on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart. With this track, Voivod paint a bleak picture of a typically Orwellian society (in the aforementioned interview given to “Metal Forces”, Langevin explicitly cited the influence of “1984”), in which obedience and the will to “identify oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than the advancement of its interests” (to use George Orwell’s own words) turn man into a veritable automaton, living in a state of hypnosis deemed necessary for the authority of the “big head” to be acknowledged as supreme and unassailable.

That’s not for me, too much for me

That’s all for me

And they’re going nowhere

To find better somewhere

But can’t get out of there

Is it the same message

For the preconceived children ?

Let me know, before I go…

Death of their liberty

Feeds the supremacy

Under hypnosis I take a walk

Controlled people have to stop

Robotic voice starts to talk

Why we must be listening

I think we all had the same dreams

If humanity is destined to face enormous problems, there’s nothing left to do but propose macro-solutions. That’s the argument put forward by the lyrics of “Macrosolutions To Megaproblems”, which ideally ties back to “Chaosmongers”, since it once again turns its attention to terrorist-revolutionaries whose task is to fight the “big liar” that controls men’s minds, rendering them blind. To these very men, the “chaosmongers” address an emblematic refrain, whose essence lies in the convergence of authenticity and the ability to engage with reality without any filter: “You better shake up your mind/ Coz if you’re just staying blind/ Integrity you won’t find”.

Musically speaking, “Macrosolutions To Megaproblems”, besides boasting one of the album’s most effective choruses and highlighting the four Canadians’ remarkable instrumental chemistry, packs in another gem for the annals of progressive, arty thrash, all the while delivering an implicit warning: “Power is nothing without control”.

One of the coldest, most futuristic tracks is “Brain Scan”, opened by a mechanical cadence and Snake’s menacing words, here in one of his most sinisterly inhuman/robotic guises (the influence of Syd Barrett’s “Astronomy Domine“ is more than clear, a track that, not by chance, Voivod themselves would revisit a year later on “Nothingface”). “Brain Scan” also presents one of the album’s most unsettling images, that “brain scan” which wipes out man’s personality and freedom of thought, leaving him present to himself only as an entity “outside himself” (it’s the great drama of our age, ever more concerned with surface appearances, with the boundless proliferation of images and, in short, with what Günther Anders, with extraordinary foresight, some seventy years ago called “iconomania”). At this point, Langevin recalls, Voivod had essentially encountered “an organism made up exclusively of brain matter”, in other words one of the highest forms of human evolution.

Sometimes I feel

Their cold presence

Checking my mind, it’s a brain scan

Sometimes my soul

Can’t reach a sense

This head is mine, it’s a brain scan

(…)

Locking me out of my skull

Something without physical

Disturbing my frequency

Terminate identity

Me, I, myself out of me

Out of me, out of me…

Announced by an alarming intro (a frenzied guitar riff and pulsating drums), “Psychic Vacuum” (for which a reasonably successful video was also made) resembles an intergalactic mechanism endlessly spinning on itself, while branching out into different offshoots, a symbol of the efforts that those higher forms of human evolution, mentioned earlier in relation to “Brain Scan”, must make in their attempt to seize Voivod's soul. As Langevin himself pointed out, “Psychic Vacuum” is also an indictment of the many American religious sects, “whose members are taught to depend on their master and do everything they're told, just like a machine would”.

Head is like a burning house

What can I do for my rescue

Inverse the strike to take the lead

Then following what I believe

Ain’t got the same conception

Conjured up by bleak visions of exploded stars, “Cosmic Drama” has the task of resolving the various thematic threads put forward so far by Langevin and superbly set to music alongside his bandmates. Now able to “see the little light” and “know what's in the sky”, Voivod realizes that the micro-universe it has created is “lost in a shadow” and that the future holds nothing but darkness, because there is “too much oppression”, “no satisfaction”, and it's impossible to find any degree of freedom capable of fully satisfying a humanity evidently gripped by an unease even more radical than one might imagine. “The sky is red and nature/ is falling into disgrace. Space is terror/ There's no place to be safe”: these are the words uttered by Snake as the band austerely grinds on through its sharp, visionary sonic tapestries.

In “Cosmic Drama”, echoes of the biblical tale of the Great Flood merge with a pessimism that could, in a Leopardian sense, be called “cosmic”, but spiritual and philosophical affinities also come forcefully to light (affinities that, in truth, run through all of “Dimension Hatröss”) with cyberpunk, that science-fiction subgenre devoted to exploring a dystopian future dominated by highly advanced technology, where the line between man and machine is blurred to say the least (it's worth noting that one of the cornerstones of cyberpunk, namely William Gibson's “Neuromancer”, was published in 1984, the same year Voivod released their debut full-length).

The final process

Hard and so complex

Reverse the motion

Adding some tension

Setting the machine

Awaiting to leave

My bones and my soul

On my way back home

Have a look behind

Nothing more to find

At this point, for the sake of completeness, a word should be said about the cover of “Batman”, which was released as a bonus track only on the CD version of “Dimension Hatröss”. But what would be the point? The famous theme, written – let's remember – by Neal Hefti for the hit TV series that first aired in the US between 1966 and 1968, has absolutely nothing to do with the lyrical and musical universe of Voivod's masterpiece.

Before wrapping up, however, it's important to stress just how significant Voivod have been to the evolution of metal, and how their music continues to exert an enormous influence to this day. Every time you hear metalheads making dissonant, schizophrenic, adventurous music, music perhaps steeped in dystopian, sci-fi scenarios, repeat to yourselves the names of Michel “Away” Langevin, Denis “Snake” Bélanger, Jean-Yves “Blacky” Thériault and the unforgettable Denis “Piggy” D’Amour (1959-2005).

Note

* Snake pronounces the term “Hatröss” (whose umlauted “ö” is evidently a tribute to their beloved Motörhead) as if it were the French “atroce“, which means precisely “atrocious” in Italian, but also “terrible”, “horrible”.

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20/10/2024