Wilmar: And here it is, Voivod’s swansong, the absolute last studioalbum by Voivod, to me one of the most stubborn and original bands that metal ever spawned. The tale of Piggy’s (Denis d’Amour) death I consider known among you guys and the fact that he had twenty-six songs on his laptop, which are reworked by the remaining band members into two albums. The first one, ‘Katorz’, was released in 2006, and it gave a very strong impression of the new material. I was hoping that this was carried on on the new album ‘Infini’ (unending), but unfortunately it’s not such a strong album as I hoped for.
Actually it’s too bad, because Voivod is the kind of band you wish for to go out with a bang. I suspect that if Piggy would have lived, about thirteen of the twenty-six would not have survived the selection for the new album, which should have been the follow up to 2003’s ‘Voivod’. Nevertheless there are a few gems on this album. Opening track ‘God Phones’ has an emulation to the end which brings you back to the first days of Voivod, so in between ‘War And Pain’ and ‘Killing Technology’, and overall the style of the album is a follow up to ‘Voivod’ and ‘Katorz’, the albums on which Snake returned and Voivod proceeded more in the vein of ‘Angel Rat’.
And ‘Infini’ is not really bad, but there are quite some songs that are of the level ‘filler’. Strong examples of that are songs like ‘From The Cave’ and ‘Earthache’, that really don’t cut it for me. Also very disappointing is the beginning of ‘Volcano’ which sounds literally like Motörheads ‘Ace Of Spades’. When the song finally starts out good, it’s quite a good closure, in which Voivod comes ‘full circle’ by closing the chapter with something that would not be bad on their debut ‘War And Pain’. Outstanding tracks are ‘Morpheus’, ‘In Orbit’ and aforementioned ‘God Phones’.
And to be honest: the highlights of Voivods carreer were with ‘Dimension Hatröss’ and ‘Nothingface’, and it would be fantastic if Voivod would trade the here and now for eternity with such a classic. ‘Infini’ is not the expected supernova, but at least a huge nuclear blast ;-).
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