ASSHOLES OUT OF VOIVOD

So New Orleans native/grumbling retard/enemy of Metal Phil Anselmo is awesome at tarnishing good shit, from the crackling crunch metal of Exhorder (Slaughter In The Vatican holler) to onetime tourmates Morbid Angel to well to pretty much everything with which he is even nominally connected. And it goes without saying that his ego problems toppled Pantera, as his grouchy crybaby routine didn't garner adulation with the same intensity as the bright, smily, huggable Abbott brothers. Which threatened his pwecious widdle self-worf. He's too foul to even bitch about, an unreachable jackass on whom your breath would be wasted. A drunk college girl who both wants to go home and to the taco stand and who at last simply vomits down the front of her dress.

We're detouring into unworkable metaphor here, but the point is Anselmo has irrevokably tainted Voivod's "Nothingface" after the asinine fathead joined history's most interesting band on stage somewhere in Canada last week. I'd put the clip up there but y'know come on let's not foul Voivod any further.

NUAGE FRACTAL

The day in 1991 I bought Voivod's awesome Angel Rat, I spent an inordinate time pacing the record store with it pressed snugly against Free Hand by Gentle Giant with the intention of crotching the latter, longbox and all. I'd buy Angel Rat while holding my jacket across my newly angular lap and use the register as an obstruction. This airtight plan, sadly, dominated my brain power causing an inadvertent shutdown of motor skills, and as a result I wandered too close to the door. When the alarm started screaming I crapped my pants, though for an Italian, deceit is a reflex and I recovered instantly; with a genial wave, I pointed to the non-crotched Angel Rat as the culprit. Shrugging at the clerk like whateryagunnado? I shrieked 'Know what? I'll just pay for this and go catch the last 10 minutes of Dynasty' and turned to mouth the words CAR KEYS! to Brian. When I felt the keys drop into my covertly upturned palm, so began my preparation to run like horsefuck when inevitably that narc door alerted record store staff to the timebomb in my drawers. Receipt in hand, I instead sashayed over to Brian and promptly pushed the longbox down to my knees, then bent down to rip it from the bottom of my pantleg. It's not as painful as it sounds but Free Hand was all fucked up (hence the change to unforgiving plastic holders). The moral of the story is man Angel Rat is fucking awesome.

GET OFF THE STAGE. LITERALLY.

That Metal Show's Download Fest special got off to a shaky start with a flatulent Def Leppard farting through the fartastic "Pour Some Sugar On May" but the next clip was kickass Tesla in Like New condition. In the judiciously edited interview footage, funnymen ruled like Steel Panther and Ripper Owens, and HooM! Horns to Lil' Joey Jordison whose Stump The Trunk question was about the fantastic Voivod Angel Rat record (above, Piggy most fluent guitarist ever?). Then TMS co-host/painfully unfunny dunce Jim Florentine started humping Tommy Lee's leg and Buck Cherry joined them for the incoherent argument segment in which apples battle oranges. Surprise not one of those fucknuggets voted for Faith No More as the best mainstage headliner (Def Lep 3 [seriously?], Slipknot 3).

While not being entertained by Florentine's weird neck and repeated mention of Lee's wang, I drifted off and thought about how fucking awful it must have felt for the members of Faith No More to play right after Limp Bizkit and Korn. I would've demanded that the stage be sectioned into little roped-off islands for each Bizkiteer from which they may not wander. And the Korn guys suspended from wires except Luzier.

SPEAR IS THE 'HIND DRILLER

Like eight awesome records are streaming on shitty, crash-causing MySpace sites and though I got a good look at The Mars Volta's new record at work, I don't really devote valuable office listening hours to anything heavier. To squares, even Voivod sounds like the beating of a baby with a cat. I talk the talk, so my co-workers are exceptionally knowledgeable about The Crown and Testament.

What I'm getting at is I want to crank the new Suffocation, Voivod, and Darkest Hour, and yes even those fruitcakes in Killswish Engayge get their day in court. But I don't cuz sheesh for some people it's hard to work with some guy(s) grunting. Though not rocking out, at least I can get some laughs reading Dino Cazares howlers. It's so disingenuous that he's suddenly all about Fear Factory. And I'd really like to enjoy a metal band with the shapely ass of Strapping Young Lad and the fat boobs of old Fear Factory, now known as Fuck Fucktory. But that's ruined by this sub-moronic public mudslinging.

Look, I get it; with Stroud and Hoglan, FF is supercharged. But this isn't the way to do it. In fact, why not just do FF with Wolbers/Hererra and simultaneously do the all-fatass Stround/Hoglan project, The Stubbly Doublechins. That way we all win and Burton Bell will never again need to bullshit us. And holy shit am I reading this right? did Cazares actually say I could sue [Wolbers] for stealing my riffs? That is fucking baby talk.

HOW IT'S DONE

I'm pretty sure we all agree about the existence of certain records that are so awesome as to render you incredulous before detractors. I'm pretty sure we don't agree about what those records actually are (Arise super-yes, Chaos A.D. super-no), but somehow I have the vague sense that one of the most agreed-upon classics is Voivod's masterful Nothingface record. It's so quirky and hi-tech, like Star Trek. Or the 'Pigs In Space' sketch on The Muppet Show. Anyway the point is I'm compelled to neck-punch the first luckless dork who admits to even being indifferent to this record. And I'm not even like that. The last time I punched somebody was years ago and trust me that mail lady had it coming. You've been great!

WHAT I MEANT TO SAY ABOUT VOIVOD

HooM! is your supersource for silly rants and the latest casualty was Voivod, whose upcoming record Infini unveiled artwork this week. What I meant to write (before the uh tangent) was that the band is doing an amazing job with this guitarist transition. They completed two albums without Piggy's total participation, and for touring purposes, they quietly acquired a smiley guitarist who plays the parts good. And now that the last of Piggy's work is set to go, it seems perfectly natural that they tour more, and maybe follow that with a greatest hits tour celebration (with Faith No More please please). Then do a record with the new guy. He seems cool. 

LAPSE OF TIME. SYNCHRO FREEZE.

Hey the new Voivod record Infini has a release date (early July) and artwork (above, too small guys), but thanks to a decrease in Voivod visibility and a rise in pussy-ass shit, other release date/artwork non-news is taking all the attention. In this case, Killswitch Engage and their forthcoming album produced by a slumming Brenden O'Brian. 

One wonders if -- in their honest moments -- the pleadcore/brocore bands realize they are are post-911 hair rock? It's like Godsmack and Disturbed and Shinedown are the really light stuff, like Slaughter, Poison, Warrant. The scream-scream-whine-whine bands are the next step up, good players who are heavier than the poofs. But they stick to the poof subject matter (girls/partying; broken hearts/you bitch/lifting weights) while attracting the male dollar by being tough and intense. Motley Crue. I guess the Badlands-Junkyard-BulletBoys-Dangerous Toys guys are represented by Warbringer and Municipal Waste, bands informed by the previous era's heaviest. It's like hair rock just got a lot heavier and less fun. 

'SCUSE ME WHILE I CRACK THIS GUY

Since watching Get Thrashed last month, I've been really pissed recalling stupid grunge music from the 90s. It really sticks in my craw that real Metal -- and solid rock bands like Dangerous Toys, Junkyard, BulletBoys (ok BulletBoys were tempting fate) -- went down with the hair rock ship. It suddenly was fashionable to slag oh-faced crotch rockers and declare mirthless alternative rock the savior of music and the world as a whole. Pfft. 

Now those same face-mulleteers stand in awe of bands like Mastodon (rightly) as though engaging, ambitious, intensely musical metal had hitherto not existed (wrong). Like Thrash Metal had never evolved beyond the Baloffian mosh anthem or Kill 'Em All-style paens to the unyielding glory of metal. It makes me want to slap that bottle of Stella to the floor, grab dudes by the beard and screech 'Ever hear Voivod's Nothingface, Mr. Tightpants? Oh you like the schizophrenic despair of Nirvana's In Utero? Yeah, um Suicidal Tendencies did that on How Will I Laugh Tomorrow.' 

These are the same dingleberries who used to hurriedly defend their overtly racist taste in good rap (not that silly gangster shit), when anyone with at least one testicle (symbolic or otherwise) knows that 'conscious' hip hop is insufferably smug, generally unlistenable, and strictly for pussies. And that irresponsible gun-toting druggies like Ghostface and Geto Boys rule. Now they do the same for Metal, as in 'Yeah but Mastodon is good metal. Not that silly shit like Slipknot mwhaw.'

Whew. Sorry what I meant to say is Check out the new Mastodon Crack The Skye artwork (above). The album's second song "Diviniations" streams here (at the 21:30 mark); the sure-to-be historic album out late March! Probably.

THE LAST OF PIGGY'S VOIVOD

OK that may be the most confusing headline ever but the point is Voivod's latest album, 2006's Katorz, was completed without late Voivod guitarist Denis 'Piggy' D'Amour (above), whose parts were pieced together from tracks he'd recorded prior to his me-devastating death in 2005. (Remember that stretch? Dime, Hunter Thompson, Mitch Hedberg, Piggy. Fuuuck.) Apparently, the rest of the band will wring out a final album from existing Piggy tracks:

We are putting finishing touches on the as-yet untitled new record, due this spring. Jason Newsted ended up playing on all the bass tracks. This album will mark the end of the Voivod songs Piggy wrote and performed. There are other songs from Piggy yet to be released, he wrote for himself and other projects.

Speaking of Piggy solo stuff, he and a friend of mine struck up an acquaintance at Milwaukee Metalfest. Both oddball guitarists, the two were chummy to the extent of regular correspondence (pre-MySpace) and exchanging demos. It was this way that I heard a cassette of Piggy's solo instrumental stuff around what ... 1994? Parts of that landed on Voivod albums, but we'd always kept our fingers crossed for a full-fledged Piggy solo album. And we told him so regularly. Sigh.