KILLING TECHNOLOGY

Killing Technology is the first Voivod album where they reveal their progressive tendencies. Voivod turned out to be a very influential band, but back in 1987 this sounded downright weird and unlike anything that preceded it. It's a strange hybrid of thrash metal, punk, complex time signatures, wild song structures, chromatic guitar playing and sci-fi themes. An explosive cocktail, to say the least.

The album sounds raw, aggressive and dirty. For many people it may disguise the obvious progressive nature of this album, especially the punk attitude and aggression of the vocalist Denis Belanger ('Snake') may be off-putting at first. On later albums he added more melody and tone but here he's truly a harsh and relentless tornado.

The bass guitar is mostly distorted and vigorous, it's an important element to the grim sound. A good example is the opening of Overreaction.

The drums are fast, thrashy and slightly tribal, they have more dynamics and complexity then other thrash bands of that era but they're probably not on the level of Slayer's Dave Lombardo. The sound of the drums is my only gripe with this album, it's a bit too watery, too brittle. I think the snare has been made too reverby ('gated'). It's a typical production choice back then that makes for a big sound but that lacks attack and drowns out all subtlety.

But the signature Voivod sound is of course created by the uncrowned guitar genius Denis D'Amour ('Piggy'), one of the most original players out there in the cosmos. He's been copied a lot but his dissonant chords and bizarre chromatic progressions always remain recognizable. On later albums he would also add big spacey sounding lead guitars, but those are not very prominent yet here.

Killing Technology is not my most-played Voivod album and I started out this review with a neutral 3 stars in mind. But I was surprised at the maturity and daring complexity of the compositions. Combined with the brutal energy and vitality of the performance, 4 stars would have been more then deserved if the production had been slightly better.