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I’ve been reading a lot lately. There hasn’t been shit going on here and I’ve been struggling to get out of my head, and there’s nothing like a good book for taking me some place else. I just finished Budgie from Siouxsie and the Banshees’ recently released memoir, and while I don’t think I’ll write an entire staff pick about it, I really enjoyed it. Budgie is an interesting dude… very thoughtful. And, needless to say, he has some unique life experiences that I’m very much interested in reading about. I highly recommend the book, though there isn’t a ton about the Banshees’ actual music in it. It seems like the music came easily to them, for the most part; it was the personalities and everything else that they struggled with. And boy, did they struggle! Anyway…
After finishing Budgie’s book, I launched straight into this new book on Voïvoid: Always Moving: The Strange Multiverse of Voïvod by Jeff Wagner. I heard about the book when Wagner was interviewed on one of the spinoff podcasts from You Don’t Know Mojack, but I’ve actually read one of his books before: Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal. Kind of a weird book for me to pick up as I’m not into a lot of progressive metal (and I can’t remember what spurred me to read it), but I enjoyed the book and I was eager to read Walker’s thoughts on Voïvod, whom I’ve always liked. Particularly since, as his interview with Brant from Mojack revealed, he’s a Voïvod superfan who has spent a lot of time listening to and thinking about them and also had a massive collection of Voïvod clippings and ephemera. Sadly, they mentioned in the interview that Wagner recently went through a devastating house fire in which much of this collection was destroyed… so heartbreaking. All the more reason to order a copy of Always Moving directly from his website, which I did. I believe Jeff himself mailed it out, and it was at my house in just a few days.
Walker self-published Always Moving, which I applaud, though it means that you can’t get it on Amazon, which I think is still where almost everyone buys their books these days. God bless him for standing up to that behemoth… it certainly means he’ll sell fewer copies, but fuck Amazon always and forever. Though Always Moving is self-published, it’s extremely well-done. The layout and print quality are great, and it’s free of the copy-editing issues that plague most self-published books (and that drive me bananas while I’m reading). It’s clear Walker wrote the Voïvod book he wanted to write, though I wonder if a publisher would have assigned him an editor that might have tightened things up a little. Maybe I’m reading into this because I know Walker is a fan of progressive metal, but he can be wordy. Most of the book is oral history-style, but the interview passages are broken up by sections of Walker’s writing, in which he typically soliloquizes about Voïvod’s music. Sometimes his prose can get a bit overwrought. (I’m one to talk… I know.) I get it… you can only say “this rips” or “this is great” so many times, but I think perhaps there’s some of the progressive musician’s attitude of “why play one note when seven will do?” at work here. Also, the book is organized around Voïvod’s album releases, and the chapter structures can feel repetitive after a while. Most chapters start by setting the scene and having the band members talk about how they were transitioning from the previous album, some details about writing and recording, then Walker waxes rhapsodic about the album, then you get quotes from a bunch of (primarily European progressive metal) musicians about how great the album is. That’s great if you want to pick up the book and read a chapter or two, but when you're plowing through it in one shot like I’m doing, it can feel familiar. I wonder if a good editor might have offered suggestions about how to organize the book to avoid that? Even so, all things told, it’s an excellent book, chock-full of analysis of Voïvod’s music and career, and overflowing with tasty little nuggets of info. (Like, for instance… did you know that Voïvod’s drummer Away eventually joined Men Without Hats?!?!?!)
The book has me listening to Voïvod for the first time in a while. Surprisingly, though, it’s been the early stuff that has caught my ear this time. Like many people, I always saw the trilogy of Killing Technology, Dimension Hatröss, and Nothingface as Voïvod’s creative peak, and I’ve spent way more time with those albums than any of their others. I also went through a period a few years ago of listening to their sixth album Angel Rat quite a lot. For some reason, though, I had it in my head that their first two albums, 1984’s War and Pain and 1986’s Rrröööaaarrr were not worth listening to. I remembered them being derivative, sloppily executed, and poorly produced, but now that I’ve re-listened, I can’t imagine where I got that impression… these albums rip! War and Pain in particular has been in constant rotation. The style is total punk-metal, hovering in the region between Venom and Slayer, and not only is the playing on point, but I really like the production too… it has a similar feel to a lot of 80s punk and hardcore classics done in cheap studios on small budgets for independent labels. (They mention in the book that it was recorded in a studio used primarily for radio jingles.) As I always say, that’s my favorite shit. If you have a band that sounds great, just mic ‘em up and put ‘em to tape with nothing fancy production-wise. And while the music isn’t as unique as where Voïvod would end up, I think there’s more than enough personality in their playing (particularly in Piggy’s riffing) to separate them from the then-emerging thrash pack. Rrröööaaarrr is a slightly tougher listen… the production is a little weird, and it has this odd, kind of stilted vibe, but I’ve been connecting with that record too. You can hear so much influence from Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing in it, though it’s very much put through the Voïvod filter.
I haven’t sat down and listened to any of the albums in that key trilogy since I started reading, but I’ve been watching videos and listening to songs here and there to refresh my memory. And, honestly, I’m not digging that stuff as much. Maybe I’m just not in the mood, but right now those records sound kind of cold and clinical to me… which I realize is a big part of what Voïvod is all about… that distant, sci-fi-informed vibe is basically their brand, but right now I’m connecting with the raw energy of the early stuff. Another thing I’m noticing is that I think I don’t like Away’s drumming very much. When I listen to extreme music, I want to hear the drummer beat the fuck out of their kit, but Away is kind of a tapper… it’s not as bad on those first two records when they’re clearly trying to be as extreme and as heavy as their peers, but as they de-emphasize speed and heaviness, it seems like Away’s drumming gets markedly less aggressive. Leave that shit in Men Without Hats!
As for Angel Rat, after reading that chapter and watching the video for “Clouds in My House” (which I’d never seen), I’m convinced all the people who hated on Angel Ratwhen it came out were reacting to that video and not the actual record. I played Angel Rat a ton when it got reissued on vinyl for the first time for Record Store Day in 2022, and I remember being flummoxed about why people disliked the record as much as they did. Yeah, it has a little of that 90s alt rock in the sound, but way less (and less awkwardly!) than most other 80s metal bands who were trying to adapt to new world grunge order (not that Angel Rat was a reaction to that… it came out in 1991, a few months before Nirvana broke). Angel Rat still very much sounds like Voïvod, and while the riffs are more concise, they’re still Voïvod as fuck. “Clouds in My House” is a perfect example… that main riff is killer! However, when I watch the video where the bands are dressed in Seinfeld puffy shirt-type pirate costumes, it doesn’t go down nearly as smoothly. They just look lame. That must really suck, to spend a ton of money on a video and watch it back and be like, “fuck, we look like dorks.”
We’ll see if I dig into Voïvod’s later discography as I finish up the book. I never followed the band post-_Angel Rat, except for their 2018 album The Wake, which I picked up used at some point because I had heard so many people raving about how great it is. I also need to find myself a copy of Rrröööaaarrr_, which I inexplicably don’t own… what the fuck? I swear I had that record at some point, but god knows what happened to it. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like a bank-breaker, so with a little patience I should be able to plug this shameful hole in my collection.