Legends. Pure and simple. The interview took place mere days after I submitted the thesis, the story of which is elsewhere. The upshot is that in my mind, at the time of doing this, I don’t know if the zine is continuing. I don’t know if this and the Neurosis interview to follow will ever be used, because at the time I don’t know if this issue will ever get written. But I’ve been wanting to sort this out since before the stress set in. In fact I set up an e-mail interview a couple of years ago, but for various reasons it never happened. And like I said, Voivod are legends, and I want to do this simply because I want to be able to say to myself that I did it.

Obviously as it turns out, little of what I just wrote is of any consequence because this exists. But anyway, Voivod. Why are they special? Because they are. To my regret, I wasn’t into them from day one. Or day two. My first album was 1988’s Nothingface. Their fifth. That left me with a lot of catching up to do. But what an album. To my mind, it’s still probably the pinnacle of their career. They started out as rough and raw a thrash band as you’re likely to hear with Roooaaaaaaaarrrr and War and Pain. Then they evolved through Dimension Hatross and Killing Technology. The storylines involving the Voivod becoming ever more eventful, complicated and just out there basically. With Nothingface it all came together perfectly. Dischordant riffs, melodies, song structure, arrangement and great production. Psychedelic. Spacemetal. It was all of them. And with bass lines to die for. Moments that drew to mind some early Maiden as well. The album was cited as being their breakthrough. Some people expected them to be as big if not bigger than Metallica. The album was and to this day remains compulsory listening. They were headlining a tour in the States with Soundgarden and Faith No More supporting. Things went the shape of the Pear. Guitarist Piggy was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The record label sort of went belly up. Things conspire. Yet they were the original cybermetal band even back then. Fear Factory are not as unique as many of you may believe. Voivod were doing Jim Thirwell remixes way before. Wacky covers anyone? How about the Batman theme on the end of Dimension Hatross. They were there, they’ve done it.

The band lost original bassist Blacky after the Angel Rat album. Commercial again but it didn’t make the breakthrough. Vocalist Snake left after The Outer Limits album and Eric Forrest was recruited on bass and vocals. The sound lurched back to the more abrasive thrash moments, with an industrial tinge. And it was this line-up and the Negatron album in ‘96 that gave me my first chance to see them live. Can you believe that. It took me 8 years after I started listening to them to actually see them. I never thought I would again. Then they returned a couple of years later in support of the Phobos album. One gig in London. Course I fucking went. Never thought I’d see them again. Then last year they were involved in an accident with the tour bus. Eric broke his back. I NEVER thought I’d see them again. But he’s recovered, and although still requiring the use of a walking stick, the band are back over here to support Neurosis, and if you think the stress of the last month working on that thesis is going to stop me seeing them again and taking the chance to grab an interview with them, then you are sorely mistaken. The thought is, even if it never gets printed, I’m doing this one for me. Because quite simply, they are legends.

And so I’m a little nervous as myself, Eric and drummer Michel (Away) make our way downstairs in JBs to do this interview.

So, the first thing to ask is how are you doing Eric after the little incident?

"Accident, what accident" he replies with a wry grin, before continuing. "Pretty good. I mean it's been over a year. It happened in August '98 so day by day I feel pretty good."

Did you ever feel that there would be a time when you wouldn't be able to stand on the stage again?

Well it's good to see you back.

And you come back and you've just done a couple of support gigs with Iron Maiden in Canada. How did that come about?

"Yes we did. It was a dream come true for sure. I think they were playing about 3 shows in Canada and they needed support, so they contact our management somehow somewhere, or we contacted them, I'm not too sure how it came about." At this point Michel interjects. "Well what happened was you saw Bruce on TV talking about some gigs, so we phoned our management, and our management phoned theirs to try and find out the chances of getting on it."

It kind of seems like a great mix to me, but also somewhat strange given the era that you came out of, the thrash thing, and that Maiden back then seemed somewhat indifferent to it.

"It was good though because of course it was the return of the singer (Bruce)"

And they were your first gigs back after the accident?

I was wondering how come you're actually touring at the moment, because you've just released the Kronik album, and you've got the live album being mixed, so it seems a kind of strange time for you to be touring.

Michel picks things up again, "well we were trying to put out the live album before we came out on tour, but the management negotiations with the labels are a little longer than anticipated - as normal. So the live album is going to come out in November and then we're going to record the new studio album as soon as we get back. We just had the Neurosis guys ask us to tour and we couldn't really turn that down. So yeah, we're going to work on our new studio album towards the end of the year and it's going to come out at the begining of the year 2000."

How would you describe the Kronik album, because I listen to it, and to be honest I can't really get that far into it.

How do you feel about remixes in general? It's one of those thing that I always find strange.

"I think it's good, different." Eric offers up his opinion. "It's strange hearing songs that you wrote come out in a different way". Michel continues. "We just sent the masters out to our friends and let them do it and send them back. We didn't want to be involved because it would've sounded too much like the original if we'd be in the studio and looking over their shoulders. So it was quite a good surprise I think. Actually Piggy was a little bit against it, but when he heard the tracks he wanted a full album of remixes" finishes Michel as Eric laughs in the background.

So is there any chance of that?

I've been listening to Voivod now for too many years, but I'm not sure a lot of the people that will read this have listened. So how would you describe the sound and the whole theme that's always been running through the albums.

"It's just a mixture of hardcore, metal and space music. We were listening to like King Crimson mixed with Motorhead and Discharge, and I would listen to Iron Maiden at the begining of the 80s when they were really popular. But it's definitely metal."

And how about the theme that runs through the albums, are you continuing that on the next one?

Does that mean the final Voivod album?

"The final chapter of the story. No we're going to keep going" grins Michel in response to the look of worry on my face and panic in the voice. "Don't worry about that." Ah, thank whoever's upstairs or downstairs for that then. The continuation of Voivod is an important thing as far as I'm concerned.

There appears to me to have been three musical phases to the Voivod history, the first four albums through to Dimension Hatross, then the Nothingface, Angel Rat, Outer Limits trilogy which was a more melodic spacey sort of thing, and then a return to the harsher, harder material on the last couple of albums. Was that return Eric's input or a natural thing?

"A natural thing for sure" reckons Eric, who joined the band at the time of this return, hence my questioning. We came to jam and they had to get to a new single." "Well we'd done like four thrash albums, and then three psychedelic albums, and we kind of started missing the heavy stuff, so we started writing the heavy stuff again. Snake didn't like it and didn't want to be doing any yelling any more and left the band. And so with Eric joining we had to adapt to his approach, a really heavier approach and the songs. So it turned out to be much heavier than we were expecting, which was cool."

You've just said that you're going to be carrying on after the next album. How did you actually manage to stay together as a band when all your peers from the thrash era were splitting up towards the end of the 80s, with the exception of the bands that made it huge of course like Metallica.

Was there ever a temptation to keep going, but perhaps change the name of the band, as it was perhaps synonomous with a certain style of music, that in a way some people were prejudice against without ever having actually heard it?

Yeah, I would agree. It's kind of like looking back now, I see you as a band that were say the forerunners of the likes of Fear Factory and all the bands like that with this "cyber" metal thing, remixes and all that sort of thing. Do you ever feel maybe bitter or disappointed at other bands seemingly coming through and if you like, stealing your thunder?

Yeah, I can remember all the reviews from way back when saying how your sound was ahead of its time.

"Well you can only be ahead of your time for so long" reasons Michel not illogically. "Obviously people picked up on the sci-fi metal sound and took it further."

And you still doing a lot of artwork these days?

And have you realised or are you planning a release of your art at any time?

Which to my mind is pretty criminal. That a band with the foresight and ability that they have needs to continue to slog away in order to finance releases, and the like, when others, no names mentioned, can come straight out of Hell on the long road, and write a book about it. Ah well, I'll be bitter for the band. It's what I'm good at.

Being a band that always appears to have embraced technology, how do you feel about the Internet as a tool for the promotion and dealing with music.

Would you ever consider using it to release an album yourselves?

And so is there any label deals in the pipeline at the moment?

Throughout your years of experience, are then any lessons that you would feel are the best to learn from the industry that could be past on to younger bands.

After the European dates, what are the plans for the rest of the year. You mentioned the next album.

Any hints as to what it's going to sound like (well apart from great obviously)?

"Yeah it sounds like Voivod" laughs Eric. "I think it's the same deal after playing thrash metal for so long we decided to go with the psychedelic sound then go back to thrash. And I think now we miss the psychedelic sound again, so we've added it back." "This one's going to be a little different from Phobos and Negatron for sure" Eric manages to get me licking my lips that's for certain. Yeah, I kind of missed those moments, and for me the Nothingface trilogy I guess is the "real" Voivod - mainly because that's the era that I initially got into the band.

There are times live when I've heard you sing the older material that I do actually think that you sound similiar to him, I don't know if you've ever consciously tried.

I think when I saw you down in London last time, it was Astronomy Dominae, and I closed my eyes and it sounded the same then.

How do you actually feel in that the last couple of times I've seen you, you've had to set your own stuff up on stage. How do you feel after all these years having none of these expensive road crew to do it for you?

So as we come to the year 2000, does the millenium mean anything to you?

And so with plans for the new album in 2000, are you going to return to Europe?

Are you planning on going back to the States?

"Absolutely. Neurosis asked us last night if we want to do 3 weeks with them." "Really? I didn't know that" states Michel, and a brief conversation between the two ensues. It's private, so no listening in now. Just whistle while we wait ok? dodedodododo do.

So how has the tour with Neurosis been going? (You can see I'm on a roll now with the deep, probing, incisive questions!)

Well, I've taken up more than enough of your time, so are there any final words?

Well let's just hope it continues then.

"I ain't looking for no day job man" states Eric, and there's no better place to stop than on such an optimistic and positive note. Now, if you've taken the time to read this interview, cheers for that. Now do the honourable thing and go and search out a few Voivod albums. Get them back to the room, give them a few spins and just let yourself be sucked into their unique world. And then we'll see you all the next time they return to these shores. And with luck I can do an interview with them where I ask something of actual meaning. Oi, whoever said "that'll be a first" can leave now.