KATORZ

"Katorz" is the eleventh full-length studio album by Canadian metal act Voivod. The album was released through The End Records/Nuclear Blast Records in July 2006. It´s the successor to the 2003 eponymously titled album. Although guitarist Denis "Piggy" D-Amour died from complications from colon cancer in August 2005 (aged 45), D-Amour had recorded both his guitar parts and Jason "Jasonic" Newsted´s bass parts for the material featured on "Katorz" before his death. He had even left instructions for the remaining members on how he imagened the songs to sound. An incredibly innovative guitarist and songwriter...this is D-Amour´s swansong (although "Infini" (2009) showed that D-Amour had even more material written and hidden in his archives).

So the recording process of "Katorz" was relatively unusual, as the drum and vocal parts were recorded after the guitar and bass parts. I´m not sure how that works for a drummer, but they may have had to adjust the tempos of the original guitar/bass recordings to the drum tracks.

Stylistically the material on "Katorz" sounds like a more raw, unpolished, and attitude filled version of the material found on the preceding album (both albums are if compared to earlier Voivod releases, closest to the style on "Angel Rat" (1991)). So no stylistic surprises (this is still hard rocking heavy metal with a touch of dissonance and Denis "Snake" Bélanger´s unique punked vocals on top), but the sound production has a touch of demo quality to it, which is of course only natural given the circumstances of the recording process. The extra rawness of the sound actually becomes Voivod very well and they don´t sound as domesticated as they did on the last album.

It´s not that "Katorz" is a great revelation in the discography of Voivod and this period of Voivod is arguably one of the least interesting, but when that is said "Katorz" is still a pretty decent quality release and I find myself enjoying it more than I enjoyed the self-titled release from 2003. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives).