WAR AND PAIN

I'm feeling bad giving 3/5 to Voivod's debut since I prefer listening this one than Wish You Were Here (My rate for it is 4/5). The fact is that War and Pain is obviously not the reason to Voivod being here. And their first two albums are the less relevant albums in every way into their discography. But this debut is the hardest. Hard listening, really. Harder than the bizarre and chaotic Voivod presented between Killing Technology and Nothingface. That's because of the poor thrashy sounding. Sounds a monotonous hardcore/thrash metal album at first, but after all these Voivod years I'm saying this one pretty kick asses, and the happiness to find a fine album into something previously boring is better than a masterpiece at first listen.

This is much more than a simple repetitive thrash metal. Piggy dissonant guitar riffs, the Voivod's soul, is already there. The main Voivod's plot is SCI-FI, and the album concepts by Away are awesome. The early sound of Voivod has the futuristic setting, but not in a space opera way, full of dimensional travels, technologies and space pirates. This one is the beggining of the Voivod saga, right on Earth, and the album theme is around nuclear devastation. The raw rotten rock of War and Pain fits perfect with the album concept. The poor quality of this death/thrash record brings the catastrophe to the air, and listening to this album I breathe the polluted and dirty smoke from a post-apocalyptical city ruled by an evil cyberpunk bikers gang, wearing red mohawks, gay leather outfits, big ass boots and monochles, trapping innocent hostages and torturing them til death with chains, and laughing at the misery and scarcity. I can clearly watch Piggy in the middle of the ruined old buildings playing Suck Your Bone, while the angry Snake sings barely biting the mic. Piggy's guitar is too damn dissonant as ever, and you will find some kind of strange psychedelic riffs, full of effects and feedback on the last track. Oh hell, you will find the angriest Snake ever listening to this album, his voice is unique. Take a look at Blacky and you will see, his appearence and attitude playing the bass is so violent! The cover art it's a fine way to describe what I heard from Voivod's debut. The band was very influenced by the 70's progressive scene and crust hardcore. Here's the answer if you are asking yourself what the kind of hell these guys were trying to do with their first underrated album. This is the extreme, heavy heavy side of Voivod. I needed guts to start enjoying War and Pain. But it worth a lot.