Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Voivod and Other Stuff

Hey, so I illegally downloaded the new Voivod album, Katorz, the other day, (You know, the one they made from demo recordings after their guitar player died, etc.)and while I don't have time for a full review, I will say that unless I'm completely broke again by then, I probably will buy it for real whenever it comes out on the 25th. I'm cool like that. But anyway, there's a few different camps when it comes to Voivod:
The first are the too-old-school-for-their-own-good metalheads who have been wishing since 1989 or so that the band would just make a generic thrash re-hashing of Rrroooaaarrr or War and Pain, and have brains too walnut-sized to handle anything they've done since their (kinda shitty) early material. If this is you, you won't like this album.
The second really dug all the weirder stuff they were doing on albums like Nothingface and The Outer Limits and aren't too tied down to the idea that they have to "totally thrash, dude." I suppose you've got maybe a 50/50 shot of liking this one, I dunno.
Third, if you don't need everything to be all-out speed metal and can stand the idea of Voivod doing some straight-forward rocking, instead of just going all over the place, you'll probably dig this album a lot. Basically, if you liked the self-titled 2003 album, you'll love this, because it's along the same lines, but better. This is pretty much where I fall, thus the decision to pay money for it someday.
After that, there's the "why the hell is this guy singing through his nose?" crowd, and I suppose you guys should probably just skip this one.

But really, all this serves as a reminder of my crappy luck with bands I like putting out good stuff lately.
Anthrax puts out We've Come for You All, their most critically-acclaimed record in a while and maybe their best with John Bush, and the next thing you know, they've kicked him out of the band and put together the old lineup, which includes a singer who doesn't fit anything Anthrax has written in over a decade and a guitar player who thinks Scott Ian is going to burn in hell for reading Stephen King.
Sepultura finally puts out a good album with Derrick Green on vocals, (and I'm not ashamed to say I liked Dante XXI better than Beneath the Remains or Arise.) and it's immediately followed by the only remaining Cavalera brother leaving the band to do techno and hip-hop or some crap like that, and Andreas Kisser undecided on whether he wants to continue with the band after the tour is over. This will undoubtedly lead to them reuniting with Max Cavalera, who's spent the last decade pretending he's a rock star and making horrible mall-rock albums with Soulfly, reforming the lineup that most recently gave us the steaming pile of shit that was Roots.
Then, there's Voivod, who put out a really good album, but have to record it AFTER one of their main guys fucking dies, which kind of makes touring and future albums difficult. (I know they said Piggy had recorded enough stuff for three or four albums, but you have to assume that the best stuff got used for this one. Remember when Metallica crapped out an album of Load leftovers? Yeah.)

I just can't win sometimes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hey have you ever thought of putting up your collection DVDs if you have any?

that might make for some good content. you could start reviewing them too.