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 VOIVOD
by Matt Smith
When I was asked to do an interview with Voivod - one of the most innovative bands in the metal universe - I of course said yes. Actually I was ecstatic, because they have always been one of my all time favorite bands.
But it also brought somber feelings as these were the interviews the band were giving to promote the first new album since founding guitarist Piggy (Denis D’amour) died last October from colon cancer. So, as you might imagine, there were a lot of questions I had about the making of Katorz, the 14th Voivod release, and Snake (Denis Belanger) and Away (Michel Langevin) were more than accommodating...
GASPetc: I want to start off by saying how sorry I am about Piggy's passing. He’s always been one of my favorite guitarists of all time and he’s also one of the most unique guitarists, not just in metal but in the whole music world.
Away: Yeah, he was definitely an innovator, that’s for sure.
GASPetc: I love Katorz and I’m so glad Piggy's contributions were able to be used. Also, I really like those little acoustic pieces in between the songs on Katorz and I was wondering if that was something he was working on and you guys worked it into the album or was it always going to be a part of the album?
Away: Well, he actually recorded the acoustic bits when he was very sick and it was his last recordings and Snake and I were not too sure if it was in good taste or bad taste to include them on the album. I’m sure it was not his intention to include this track on the album and he was just expressing his feelings while he was fighting the disease. He got an acoustic guitar from his girlfriend and he did these recordings and we thought it might be too personal to include them on this album. But we did it anyway, so hopefully it blends well with the rest of the songs on the album. We wanted the album to have a feeling of a journey so that’s why we put them onto the album and I’m sure Piggy would have wanted it to be heard eventually.
Snake: When Away listened to it he said, "Wait until you hear it. It’s so deep," and the whole thing is like 27 little songs. When you listen to it you get the chills and goosebumps because you can hear Piggy coughing and the refrigerator in the background and passing cars. First of all I thought it was too personal but I liked the idea anyway and said let’s give it a try. So we went to a friend of ours and he took some sounds Away had been working on for the recording and mixed them with the acoustic pieces.
GASPetc: Yeah, I think it works really well! And it’s particularly special to hear because in the whole Voivod catalog there aren’t any acoustic pieces and it’s a nice touch.
Away: Yeah, it was the first time that we had an acoustic sound in our whole career and we were lucky that Piggy had this digital recording device he put on the table while he was playing the acoustic guitar. We weren’t aware of these recordings until his girlfriend told us there were these acoustic recordings he had on the recording device and I retrieved the data and it was really hard to listen to and I couldn’t listen to it all the way through the first time. It was just too emotional because you can tell he was very sick through the recording.
GASPetc: It’s amazing he was able to do that even though he was so sick.
Away: He was always recording his stuff and for the tracks he did for Katorz he recorded them professionally using Pro Tools on his laptop on top of the demos we had done. He was very professional at miking up his equipment and recording everything so we have a lot of archives to deal with right now.
GASPetc: That actually leads me up to the next question. How many new tracks did Piggy record that you can go back to and rework into finished songs?
Snake: Well, you know we have so much material to go through and for 25 years he was putting together stuff in different formats and there’s so much other personal stuff he had been working on so we pretty much take things day by day and don’t take anything for granted and don’t plan too much ahead of what we could possibly record because there’s so much to sort out.
GASPetc: That’s great, so you’ve probably got about another two Voivod albums that you could complete, right?
Away: Well, we have one for sure that we wrote with Jason in 2003-2004 that is all demo’d and everything and we have to finish it and then we need to sit down and go through the archives.
GASPetc: Well, I definitely look forward to hearing new Voivod material and it will mean a lot to the hardcore fans.
Away: It’s from the same bunch of sessions so it is very similar to Katorz, but there are songs that are so good that we wanted to include on Katorz, but then we would have fucked up the balance of the album. But people can expect something very similar to Katorz.
GASPetc: Great! Now you pronounce it Katorz (KAHTOURZ), is that the official pronunciation of the title?
Away: Well, it depends. We pronounce it KAHTOURZ, but English speaking people say it different.
GASPetc: Now does that name have some signifigance? I know you got the name from some master tapes Piggy wrote on.
Snake: Well, it was a working title. Piggy gave every one of us a CD to listen to and we didn’t know what to call it so he said “oh, the 14th album” so we said
“quatorze,” the number 14 in French. So that was the reference but the way he wrote it was not the right way to spell it, but we thought it was a funny way to spell it. And when he died we were looking for an album title and it was really touchy because we didn’t want a title with too much sadness or a message regarding his death, because he’s alive on this record so we didn’t want to mention God or death. So we looked at the handwritten title on the CD on the table and we just said “Katorz, great,” and we kept the name and handwriting that was originally on the demo.
GASPetc: Now are you planning on doing any kind of touring to support the CD as a tribute to Piggy either playing live to his backing tracks or having a fill in guitarist - which to many Voivod fans would be sacreligious - as the only guitarist I could think of that could pull it off would be Adam Jones from Tool.
Away: I know that Piggy was a huge fan of Adam Jones but I don’t know if Adam likes Voivod or not, I have no idea...
GASPetc: Oh c’mon, everyone loves Voivod!
Away: (Laughs) ...but we thought of Andreas from Sepultura, who we toured with in the past and really got along with, and is very dissonant and melodic so I think he could pull that off and I know that Andreas could come with us on stage if we had to promote the songs live. It would be very weird for us to do a live show without Piggy, but we hope to have plans to do something about it.
GASPetc: Yeah, I totally understand and that also answers my question about you continuing with the Voivod name because you’ll probably start a completely new project eventually.
Away: Yeah, well we’re not too concerned about this lately, but we would love to pay tribute to Piggy live someday. We might work with Andreas from Sepultura and build a core for live performances but we’ll still call ourselves Voivod.
Snake: Yeah, and to do that our idea was to bring in guest guitarists, but we’ll have to build a core and they would have to learn old Voivod songs and then we could think of inviting Dave Grohl, or Lemmy, or whoever, but we have to work on the main core. And while Jason is working on Supernova, that gives us time to work on the guy for live shows and that’s the plan for the next couple of months. We have Andreas here in Montreal and we’ll practice and just start the process. It’s a long process. It’s not going to replace Piggy, but we have to keep on doing what we like. Piggy certainly would have done the same if something would have happened to me or Away; we would have to keep going. That’s the plan for now.
At one point we were asking should we shut the door and quit? I’m reading comments on different websites here and there and people are confused because it’s a personal and emotional thing and they’re saying without Piggy it’s not going to be the same and we know it’s not going to be the same, but you know we’d like to continue to pay tribute to him.
GASPetc: Yeah, I totally know what you mean. Now the main lyrical topics of Katorz seems to be anti-war/Bush. Was this intentional or was it just what was on your mind at the time of writing?
Snake: Yeah, well it’s basically what comes out of my mind for the time, or whatever. This album compared to others...I mean war has always been something related to Voivod...
GASPetc: Yeah, I know, ever since War and Pain you guys have tackled the subject of war.
Snake: ...yeah, we’re still in War and Pain [laughs].
GASP: Yeah, there are things that never change.
Away: We’ve tried our best to be decent human beings and it’s gotten worse, but it’s not our fault.
Snake: History repeats itself. I mean we’ll probably still be talking about war 10 years from now! It’s always been a big subject for Voivod, as well as more sci-fi in the way everything goes very fast and we as human beings are constantly changing and we’re trying to follow trueness and there’s craziness everywhere. Some people build rockets to go into outer space and some people build rockets to kill other people, and that’s our world.
Away: And some people build rockets to go into space that can throw rockets at other people [both laugh].
Snake: So, it’s the same kind of story but I would say with more rage and I’m filled with frustration when I look at what’s going on. Some thing’s never change and it’s always the same crap. While people are making their millions, other people suffer for it in other parts of the world and it’s crazy.
GASPetc: It IS crazy, and as we’re seeing now, Mother Earth is showing us how she’s feeling by all of the natural disasters in the world.
Snake: Yeah, who knows when she’s gonna give up, like I’m outta here.
GASPetc: The earth could just one day crack in half and both halves float into space, for all we know.
Away: I wonder if it’s gonna crack along the US border [everyone laughs]?
GASPetc: Right along the US/Canadian border [everyone laughs].
Away: That’s it, south and north [laughs].
GASPetc: I totally love DVOD-1 (the Voivod DVD released by MVD Music Video Distributors, covering the original line-up years 1983-1991). It was a Voivod fan’s dream to get all of that early live footage and classic videos onto one DVD and I know that you’re planning on releasing a DVOD-2 and it’s supposed to pick up after Angel Rat. I know you’re also planning a DVD tribute to Piggy and I was wondering if DVOD-2 is going to be a tribute to Piggy or is it going to continue the Voivod story?
Away: Well, it’s more like we wanted to cover the Eric Forrest period with DVOD-2 and then cover the Jason period with DVOD-3, but Sam Dunn who did Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, he’s doing the documentary on Voivod and Piggy and we hope to be able to get the proper financial support to finish it off for next year. So hopefully it will come out in 2007. It’s also about the making of Katorz and the next 13 songs coming out in 2007, but a lot of it will be about the life of Piggy.
GASPetc: Wow, that sounds excellent. I look forward to that.
Away: Yeah, you can see the trailer at TheEndRecords.com.
GASPetc: Cool, I’ll have to check that out. Unfortunately I never got to see Voivod with Eric, even though I love those albums (Negatron and Phobos), especially Phobos, and I’m wondering Away, what you’re feelings are on that era of the band because I know it seemed from my perspective, maybe because I haven’t read much about it, but it seemed to have ended badly with the van accident and Eric having to learn how to walk again, it’s seems like he left on a sour note.
Away: Well, on a personal level we’re still good friends and I’m still in touch with Eric through e-mail and I make sure that the royalties are forwarded to him. He lives in Europe now and he has a new band called E-Force and he put out two albums already so we’re still very good friends and we saw him at Piggy’s funeral so it’s all good, you know. It’s just that by the end of 2000, because of the accident in 1998, we had to take a year-long break because Eric was in the hospital for almost a year. And we were never really able to get the momentum back and we ended up in a very difficult financial situation and by the end of 2000 we decided to quit the band, he and I. Eric was the one who got hurt the most in the accident and plus we had an album we never recorded. We just demo’d it and we want to include that on DVOD-2.
So, it all ended sadly, but at least we were able to stay friends. And then in 2001, we decided to reform with Snake and Jason came on board and that’s the line-up now. But the power trio period is still a period I’m very proud of, but Eric is the one who got the bad deal with the accident because he was ejected from the van. He’s looking much better now, he’s not walking with a cane anymore and I’m happy that he has his own thing going.
GASPetc: That’s good to hear that you guys are still on good terms and he’s doing better. I love those power trio albums, and I always thought those albums were more of a return to the Noise days. One thing I’ve always loved about Voivod is that when you put on a new Voivod album you’re always in for a surprise.
Away: [laughs] Yeah, we tried to become the most original and innovative band instead of being the fastest and the noisiest, and we realized it was a much bigger challenge than expected.
GASPetc: I can imagine. Now, the first time I saw Voivod was when Faith No More and Soundgarden opened for you and back then they all looked up to Voivod and you would read interviews with them saying how much they love you guys. But you guys never broke mainstream in the way that Slayer and Metallica did, but always maintained that creative side that many bands didn’t dare to experiment with. Like, for instance, I love the Angel Rat album, whereas a lot of my friends didn’t. I thought it was a great statement because you were expanding on your sound. There was probably some record label pressure to get a more commercial sound and more radio exposure like you did by doing “Astronomy Domine”. Is that what was happening around the time of Angel Rat, were you getting pressure for more commercial airplay?
Away: Well, we were trying to be more listenable to a larger audience that’s for sure. And the album still sold pretty good, about 100,000 copies. For Voivod that was good, but for a major label it’s not that good. I guess we were just trying to reach a larger audience because we had been underground for most of the `80’s until we did “Astronomy...” and got on the air a lot more.
GASPetc: Yeah, because the first time I heard Voivod was on the old syndicated radio show Metalshop and I heard “Tribal Convictions” and became a fan after that. Then I went back and bought the old albums and when Nothingface came out I was even more impressed by it. I mean when you listen to what Slayer and a lot of the original thrash bands were doing then, and what you were doing, there was just no comparison.
Snake: [laughs] It was like we were on a different planet. That’s always been the case with us, because we grew up in a small industrial town away from every major big city. The four of us were born there and we were always different and instead of following the trend of Slayer or Metallica, we decided that Voivod was one original thing and nothing could come close to what we were doing back then.
Away: And not a lot of bands like that were into prog rock and avant garde music and movie soundtracks and it gave us a lot of that original sound.
Snake: I remember watching Road Warrior the other day and I noticed the music during one part, I think it was from Killing Technology, and it was the same thing [imitates the riff].
Away: Yeah, the intro to “Forgotten in Space”...
Snake: Yeah, exactly, and I was I like “Oh, my god, this is it!”
GASPetc: Speaking of the earlier albums, I love the War and Pain reissue, and I was wondering if there are any plans to reissue any of the other Noise albums with such sweet packaging? Because it seems like on that War and Pain reissue you cleaned the vaults of all the early demos and early live stuff and I wanted to know if any other special editions are planned for the other Noise albums?
Away: Yeah, Sanctuary records are going to reissue and remaster the other Noise albums with some Iron Gang demos and live shows from back then, with new art and photos very similar to the War and Pain reissue. And also The End Records are going to reissue Angel Rat and The Outer Limits in the same way so there’s a lot of work until the end of this year. And we’re lucky to have the masters of the Iron Gang demos so we’re going to release those too.
GASPetc: I look forward to those too. I really like your cover of “Chemical Warfare” by Slayer on the War and Pain reissue. You guys must have been playing that at the same time they were playing it live and even before they recorded it themselves.
Away: Well we had the demos of Slayer and we played it live and it ended up on one of the Iron Gang live shows. I also have a book coming out on the artwork of Voivod.
GASPetc: I was just going to ask you about that. So it’s getting published soon?
Away: Well, I actually pushed back the date [laughs] and it’s sitting here but I’m hoping it’s coming out soon next year. But while I was doing it I realized I had material for more than one book so there will be more of that.
GASPetc: Excellent, because one thing that's so cool about Voivod is the artwork and the concepts behind the albums.
Away: Well, we always tried to connect everything together, the music, the lyrics, the artwork and that’s also why we did not put the Voivod creature on the front cover of Katorz, because we wanted to have something to represent the four of us together.
GASPetc: Well, I think that wraps it up, I’ve chewed your ears off enough.
Away: That’s cool, as long as people are interested, we’re happy!
GASPetc: Yeah, it’s great to see you still churning it out. At least you’re not giving up and doing day jobs, or doing Rockstar Supernova for that matter [laughs].
Away: [laughs] That looks like a pretty cool day job!
GASPetc: Yeah, and actually that was my last question, would you guys ever do a reality show like that?
Away: Well, you know you have to think of it this way, if Tommy Lee called you one day and asked if you wanted to come jam with me on National TV would you pass that up? I know that Jason was very tortured about this one, but I know that he’s having a great time, that’s for sure.
GASPetc: That’s good, I actually haven’t seen the show yet, but everything I’ve read about it sounds like it would be fun, I mean aside from Tommy flirting with all the female contestants.
Away: [laughs]
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