Voivod goes out like a Quentin Tarantino via The Matrix explosion with new album INFINI

June 24, 4:11 PMHeavy Metal ExaminerMark Morton

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Well, here is an album that pleases and saddens me simultaneously. Voivod always had that knack of embracing dualities, so I really shouldn’t be surprised. Relapse Records recently unveiled the twelfth and final installment of the Voivod saga, entitled Infini. For those unaware, Infini is the last album to feature the signature guitar work of founding member Denis “Piggy” D’Amour’s untimely passing in 2005.

Infini, though largely compiled sans Piggy, still manages to continue Voivod’s evolutionary, trend-defying journey, which they began back in 1984 with the cyber-thrash breakthrough album War and Pain. The band creates sound profiles in the same way a chef patterns taste profiles. They have an innate understanding of what tones and styles complement each other and combine them in a fashion that, on a brief pass, sounds simple and obvious, but at closer listen is genially complex.

Sure, the band offers a touch of the grit-and-spit, grunge sound, but if you take a trip into your Way-Back Machine, Voivod was actually one of the bands that helped develop that sound before it had a name. One of the deep-rooted ironies of Voivod was the fact that most of its naysayers didn’t like them because they sounded so simplistic. And the quick rebuttal from the devoted fan was always, “okay then, YOU try to play it!”

Another key element of Voivod’s distinctive sound is that most songs are part Motörhead-like joyride, part Hunter S. Thompson mind-trip. They make you think when you don’t expect to. This may have something to do with Snake’s post-Jim Morrison punk-ish vocal delivery coupled with Piggy and Away’s hack-n-bash, frenzied rhythmic accoutrements. Tracks like “From the Cave” and “Global Warning” promote lead-footed driving, while scraping your brainpan with socio-environmental issues.

But what is most entertaining is that many of the songs on Infini invoke a neo-symphonic, suite-like structure, as if the listener is participating in the Voivod story. Very few bands have the ability to pull its listeners in, between the notes and electronic reverberations, and plug them in directly into their self-styled “matrix”. As the album draws to a dissonant close with the epic earblaster “Volcano”, one fact implants itself firmly into your brain – Voivod will NOT soon be forgotten.