With the New Year in full sway and winter making the days and nights colder and colder, its nice to see a number of Spring tours being announced. Here is the latest adventures by Voivod who will be hitting the road with Yob and Amenra. Dig in.
The Press Release:
Canadian progressive sci-fi metal innovators VOIVOD continue to promote their newest and much acclaimed studio effort “The Wake”, which was released via Century Media Records worldwide last September and ranked high in various year-end polls by international media outlets. Currently underway for shows in Japan and Australia starting today, VOIVOD have recently announced a North American tour with YOB and Amenra for March/April and a return to Europe for a few selected Summer festival events. Here is a list of all upcoming VOIVOD shows announced so far: Continue reading Voivod Announce North American Tour→
Artist: Voivod Title: “Katorz” (re-release) Label: Metal Mind Productions Release Date: 11/11/2014 Genre: Hard Rock Rating: 4/5
Originally released in 2006 on The End Records, “Katorz” is the eleventh album by the legendary band Voivod. The recording was recently re-issued by Metal Mind Productions and now comes in a Digipak holder but features no additional tracks or expanded liner notes. With that being the case my original thoughts on it remain the same and I have restated those views in the review that follows. The edition is limited to 2000 copies so diehards might want to act fast if interested in purchasing.
Everyone knows the phrase “with triumph comes loss”, but as I listened to the most recent release by the band Voivod, I had to wonder if “with loss comes triumph” as well. The reason I bring this theory to light is due to the sad truth that the group would lose founder and riff wizard Denis “Piggy” D’Amour to colon cancer in August of 2005. Prior to his illness and throughout his treatment demos were written and worked on in hope that he would recover and the new recording could be completed and released for their fans. When this would not be a possibility anymore and Piggy succumbed to the illness and died, the band was faced with what should be done and more important – what would be right to do. Before his death, Piggy had instructed drummer Michel “Away” Langevin on the whereabouts of the demos and that he wanted this music completed and reach their fans. From there it would be far from simple, but yet it would be done and the results serve as a fitting reminder to the creative musician D’Amour was. It’s an interesting album that sounds quite good especially when you take into account the means that it was recorded and what the members had available to them to do it. From the demos with Piggy’s last guitar work and Jason’s bass, drums were added by Michel while vocals were hammered out by “Snake” Belanger in his home. It is not the typical album creation scenario but the guys rose above it all. As you play this Hard Rock & Punk influenced album at any volume you will be hard-pressed to find any limitation to it. “Getaway” is a great opener and has a slight Motorhead vibe to which is never a bad thing and Snake has a great feel to his vocal here and on “After All” (two of my preferred tracks). An interesting observation to the recording is the tightness between bass and drums which was fantastic as while the two instruments are normally recorded together that was not possible for the demo work and found Michel figuring out the feel from the tapes. He shines through especially in how he slows down and speeds up as if he was sitting there with the other guys. Continue reading “Katorz” (re-release) by Voivod→
It was just about two months ago when we posted a blog announcement here in the Musings about the inaugural edition of the Shockwave Festival (see that post HERE). The event was to feature what appeared to be a co-headlining Fear Factory and Voivod (even though it seemed that FF would close all the shows and hence get a longer set) along with Cattle Decapitation, Misery Index, Havok, Last Chance To A Reason, The Browning, Revocation, Forged In Flame, Vildjarta, and Dirge Within. Sounds pretty cool if you are into most of or all of these bands right? I felt that it was also cool that another new festival was coming to pass because that showed promise that others would be able to follow suit if the mood struck them. Then around the tail end of June the word got out how Revocation, Forged In Flame, Vildjarta, and Dirge Within had all dropped off the tour but it was never really made that clear as to what the reason was. The revised tour poster is below and obviously no longer featured those bands names. I appended these changes into the original blog posting for good measure since we like to speak about tours based on our heavy live coverage on the main site but with this getting weirder it prompted a second post.
Stranger than that was the announcement just the other day (7/3/12) that Voivod had pulled off the tour and they came right out into the open and said “Shockwave tour is no longer as advertised, Voivod really wanted to be touring but the situation was out of the band’s control and the tour producers could not live up to the promises.” Those are some pretty heavy comments. That left the fans who had purchased tickets with five bands less than the originally promised eleven. No one seemed to be added to the mix and to me this was just short of a Summer Slaughter lineup in terms of bands being offered to the general public. Continue reading The Inagural Run Of The Shockwave Festival Is Cancelled 🙁→
