Book review: Always Moving: The Strange Multiverse of Voivod by Jeff Wagner

By PERRY GRAYSON

FORMER Metal Maniacs editor Jeff Wagner has scored another success with this top-notch, in-depth biocritical book on weird, avant-garde, proggy and eccentric French Canadian metal warlords Voivod.

Hot off the heels of Wagner’s mammoth Fates Warning tome (Destination Onwards), Always Moving stands at nearly 530 pages. It’s totally exhaustive, well-written and thoroughly researched.

No stone is left unturned. The adjective geeky comes to mind. Unabashed geekiness! But then, we headbangers are geeky and consumed with the minutiae of the artists we dig.

Wagner interviewed all the past and present Voivod members, managers, their peers from other bands, musos who were influenced by Voivod and industry experts. Always Moving also includes plenty of input from dearly departed axeman Denis ‘Piggy’ Amour. The book text is flawless and rife with original, trippy, dystopian artwork by drummer Michel ‘Away’ Langevin.

Always Moving is a nostalgic voyage, bringing me back to my early high school headbanging days of the late eighties and early nineties, when I would cut out metal mag pictures of my fave bands and tack them to my bedroom walls. Voivod was right there, next to Death –  two future-conscious metal bands that were always evolving with each new release.

It has been said that the French are incredibly artistic but their North American kin are even more idiosyncratic when it comes to music. Canucks Voivod are a bizarre concoction of polar opposite influences – primitive proto-thrash such as Motörhead and Venom combined with the complexity and atonal dissonance of King Crimson or Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Compare Voivod to traditional melodic French metalheads Sortilège. Voivod comes across as innovative, creating their own raw sci-fi metal vocabulary, while Sortilège (an equally proficient outfit) follows in the footsteps of tried-and-true acts like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Dio-era Black Sabbath.

What distinguishes Voivod from the pack is the fact that their sound is derived both from epic progressive rockers like Pink Floyd, Rush, Yes, Camel and Van der Graaf Generator – as well as unlikely tinges of up-tempo hardcore punk a la Discharge. Where late seventies punk mainstays such as the Sex Pistols scorned the often over-produced sounds of prog, Voivod thoroughly embraces it.

Look no farther than the trademark skanking snarl of vocalist Denis ‘Snake’ Bélanger! One of the revelations documented in Always Moving is the fact that Piggy had a bad bout of brain cancer prior to the colon cancer which eventually took his life.

From the rough and raucous thrash of War and Pain and Rrröööaaarrr to the polished prog of Angel Rat and The Outer Limits and beyond, Wagner explores it all! Always Moving covers the band’s four-decade career and is a must- read for any rabid Voivod fan or extreme metal completist.