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Digging Through The Vault
With Voivod

For many young metalheads in Canada in the 1980's, Voivod were definitely one of the main bands from here to be into. To me their peak (in terms of popularity) was with their excellent 1989 CD "Nothingface." Since then I've still followed the band and have all their CD's. Recently I was "digging through the vault" so to speak and listening to some old VoiVod CD's like "War & Pain" and "RRROOOAAARRR." While not as refined as their later CD's this is still quite unique. For this reason I felt that reminiscing about old Voivod would fit in very nicely here. Don't get me wrong, I still love the new Voivod stuff. This is more about their music up to 1989 because after all this is the "Vault of Metal."

For those poor readers who have yet to hear anything by Voivod and are interested in getting into this band, well it's about f**king time! The band has been together since 1983-84 and are still going strong! Not many bands have their conviction and are still pleasing fans from the beginning. I'm sure most first-time listeners have the typical reactions to Voivod's music...yes it's weird and unconventional, but that's the beauty of it. It's not something you'll probably grasp with one listen. With sounds ranging from thrash, death and progressive elements Voivod are a challenging listen. Even on Voivod's early CD you can tell they had more in store for listeners then typical thrash. 

I'm not sure how these guys feel still slugging it out in from of a few hundred people a night on the road after nearly 15 years! Many bands have however come and gone since 1984, yet Voivod remain. From the original line-up the vocalist Snake and bassist Blacky are no longer in the band. Both were replaced by Eric Forrest on bass/guitar. Some people haven't followed Voivod since the loss of these members but let me tell you their new stuff has more in common to their thrash roots then does their music from the early 90's. In fact the Voivod has even been awakened from his comma (1989's Nothingface).

It All Began With...

I can still clearly remember the very first time I heard Voivod. A friend of mine had just returned from a trip to Toronto and as any good metalhead would of done he made sure to stop in at the local CD shops. Well the gem of his loot when he returned turned out to be Voivod's "War & Pain." We put the tape on at some guy's basement and we were both quite freaked out by just how noisy, intense and insane the music was. At the time I was primarily listening to the typical 80's metal like Priest, Maiden, Ozzy, etc...so this was quite different. After a few repeat plays of the now classic title track "Voivod" we were hooked.

Dig deep into the vault and have a listen to the title track from this CD, and the track that got me interested in the band. It's the first track on the CD and it's simply entitled "Voi Vod" (MP3 format, 3.8megs).

By VoiVod's third CD (Killing Technology) the music was becoming more refined. They did an excellent job of combining the thrash of the early CD's with the spacey metal sound that would dominate later releases. The pinnacle of this mixture to me came with the definitive CD "Nothingface." Although the "big hit" from this CD was their cover of the Pink Floyd song "Astronomy Domine",  it was never my favorite song from the CD. I've always liked songs like "Pre-Ignition" or "The Unknown Knows" more. For your listening pleasure here's the song "Pre-Ignition" (again in MP3 format, 5.2megs).

Of course this is not the end of the Voivod story, and I don't claim to be an expert on Voivod's history. I just happen to be one of their long-term fans who has stuck with them since the beginning. If you are looking for more info on the band then check out the below discography and links.

Discography

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