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Voivod was never your average thrash band, even when they were trying to be, they weren’t. They were always kind of weird and angular. Their first lp War and Pain is an anomaly for the time. It’s clearly based off early Venom, Metallica, and Slayer, but it strays so far from the paths laid out by those groups that it has relatively little in common with them. The recording is strange, with what seems to be only a single bulldozer guitar track laid down with a layer of chorus and reverb (there to thicken it up) by the incredible Denis D’Amour: AKA Piggy (R.I.P.) . Solos are played live on the main track (rather than punching in like most metal records of the day) leaving bassist Jean-Yves Thériault, AKA Blacky, to carry the rhythm with his thick and over-driven sound. Things never manage to sound too thin, in part due to the spaced out shimmering chorus effects on the guitar and crunchy bass, but also due to the thundering drumming Michel Langevin, AKA Away, who overcomes the rather mediocre drum production (sounds like big plastic buckets in a large concrete room).  The songs themselves kind of roll at a Venom clip, but with bizarre riffy twists and turns, weird chords, and a sci-fi atmosphere. 

Voivod’s imagery was steeped in post apocalyptic sci-fi and technological nightmares from the get-go, and the wild guitar sound cultivated on this album fits with that perfectly. Away was actually responsible for their logo design, and all their album art/layout which, much like their music, broke with the norms of the day for thrash bands. Instead of the Boris Vallejo inspired airbrush fantasies most metal bands were using, Away painted surreal, abstract, pictures of grotesque machines, covered in primitive looking weaponry, and grime. His approach could be described possibly as Cubist (props to metal-inquisition) in tradition on the cover of War and Pain, featuring a stylized rendition of some kind of foot soldier armed to the teeth for battle in some horrible future war like Mad Max meets Heavy Metal (the comic) and Blade Runner.

Since this is bid hardcore though, I’d like to bring forth a kind of interesting theory: that War and Pain was a huge influence on the guitar playing of Gavin Van Vlack (of Absolution, and later Burn). While I have never heard Gavin talk about Voivod (that I can remember) the similarities in his guitar playing, and that of Piggy, are striking, and there are several riffs on War and Pain that have direct parallels in Absolution and Burn songs. If Gavin was not listening to this record, then at the very least, it makes an interesting comparison. In fact his commonalities with Piggy’s guitar playing starts with the actual sound he uses, with the wet chorus sound being really similar to the s/t Burn 7″, which is only emphasized by the constant use of full chords and open strings (employed equally often by Gavin). Take the break down around 3:40 in Warriors On Ice. It works almost the exact same style churning riff that the famous “your ideas are WRONG…etc.” part of Burn’s “Shall Be Judged”. Similarly the ascending riff in “Suck Your Bone” (ha), has pretty noticeable similarity to the bridge in Absolution’s “A Drop Of Patience” as well as the main riff in “Fall Of A Nation”. 

I’m not bringing up this stuff to disrespect or diminish the songs of Burn in Absolution in anyway. Gavin and Piggy are two guitarists I heavily admire, and I just want to point out the similarity in their technique and that both of them do really cool unexpected shit, in genres that have a reputation for being rather uniform in their approach. Anyway, this is a total killer album and there’s never been anything else quite like it.

Original pressing on Metal Blade w/ rare insert…