DIMENSION HATROSS

These metalheads from Quebec got better with each album in the 1980s. The music here sounds like both the previous Killing Technology and the next album Nothingface. Voivod, who named themselves after a local tribe I believe, are now abandoning their punk and thrash roots and are now going into more 'progressive ' territory. I remember seeing the videos for "Tribal Convictions" and "Psychic Vacuum" on Canada's answer to MTV when I was a kid. The songs and videos were way over my head, but I was intrigued. I later got Nothingface and loved it.

Even more so than on the last album, the group is making good use of tritones, odd meters, dissonance and tempo/time changes. For 1988, there wasn't a lot of metal around as sophisticated and complex as this. I love the song titles and lyrics even if I'm not exactly sure what they are about. I just like the weird sci-fi vibe to it all. The first half of the album is called Prolog, while the second half is the Epilog. "Experiment" opens with spacey sounds going back and forth between the channels. Gets faster and faster, the sound resembles something spinning real fast. Then the band comes in full throttle. Awesome guitar parts at first. Music stops then comes back with vocals now. Good fast drumming here. Great guitar playing at the end.

"Tribal Convictions" starts with pounding tribal drums and what sounds like a door or bridge opening getting faded in as the bass and guitar come in. Alternates between a riff and the tribal pounding drum part with sound effects. It changes and vocals appear. Later cool sounding slowed down vocals. Love the fast part starting over halfway. Great guitar solo here, like 1950s rock'n'roll mixed with 1980s shredding. Awesome. After some great tremoloed guitar. The song gets real intense at the end with singer 'Snake' repeating "who's God?" All four members had nicknames they went by.

"Macrosolutions To Megaproblems" fades the band in with some great bass. Then quickly changes to a faster section with vocals. I like the parts where it's just guitar, the rhythm section coming and going. Love the sound effects and clean guitar at the very end. "Psychic Vacuum" starts with fast guitar and fast pounding drumming. Vocals come in and it switches to a different section with great riffs. Good guitar solo before the tempo slows down with tom-toms pounding with guitar and bass doubling. Changes to the great last section with false ending. A bonus song was added to later versions of Dimension Hatross, a cover of the theme song to the 1960s show Batman. POW! KAZAAM!

While this is a step up from Killing Technology, both in songwriting and production, Nothingface will be just as much a step up from this. This could possibly be a good introduction to this group. There wasn't much metal to compare this to at the time. Those familiar with more modern tech metal bands may enjoy this. But being from the 1980s don't expect this to be as 'extreme' or super-ultra-heavy as the more recent bands are. 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars.