Voivod: Piggy's Posthumous Contribution Propels Band's Year

04/24/07 4:30pm

by Cameron Gordon (CHARTattack)

One of 2006's emerging feel-good stories was that of Voivod, the grandfathers of Canadian metal, who put out their Katorz album in honour of guitarist Piggy, who passed away in 2005. Michel "Away" Langevin discusses the success of Katorz and more:

ChartAttack: Katorz is the first Voivod disc since your guitarist Piggy passed away in 2005. I'm assuming at the time, there was a lot of doubt whether or not the band would continue?
Michel Langevin: Absolutely. For the first few weeks, we didn't know if there would be another album or whether the band would just break-up right away. Piggy's parents gave me his laptop shortly after he died and I couldn't bring myself to listen to it for a long time. Eventually, after a couple of months, me and our producer Glen Robinson went down to the studio to listen to what he had recorded. We were pretty amazed by the quality and the fact that these parts were pretty much finished and ready to go. It was a miracle, really.

How much did this pre-recorded material contribute to the final album?
The guitar tracks that Piggy recorded on his laptop were actually the basis for the entire album. It was a difficult process because we typically build the songs from the drums outwards. But there was never any question that Piggy's tracks and contribution would be on this album. Piggy also recorded some acoustic stuff in the summer of 2005, in between surgeries, and we were able to incorporate bits of that material into the album as well, primarily as interlude and transitional music. It was a difficult decision because he was very sick at the time and had a really hard time playing. You can hear him breathing on the tracks; it's pretty obvious that he was in a lot of pain when he recorded those bits. There was a long time when we weren't sure whether to use the material because it was so emotional but in the end, it seemed like the right thing to do.

Voivod are quickly approaching their 25th year as a band. Did you ever think the group would last this long?
To be in a band for 23 years, that is pretty rare nowadays. Honestly, our hopes were not that high when Voivod first formed. At the time, our goal was to release four or five albums - even that would be considered a big success. It's more amazing when you consider all the obstacles we've faced: switch of labels, switch of line-ups, accidents, deaths and all that sort of thing.

How does a group of kids from rural Quebec become one of the longest running metal bands on the planet? What kind of influences did you have in the early days?
Most of the bands we were listening to in the early days were English bands. Motorhead, Venom, Judas Priest, early Iron Maiden... it didn't really make sense to us to play hardcore heavy metal and sing in French. Really, our approach early on was to send demos to the addresses we found in our favourite albums. Those labels just featured English artists so that's what we did too. In fact, when Metal Blade originally signed us, we were still living in northern Quebec and we could barely speak English at all.

What's next for Voivod?
There are 13 more songs that we're looking to finish off for a new album, so Glen will be helping out on those as well. After we finished the Ozzfest tour in 2003, we started writing immediately and soon gather a ton of news songs to record. A lot of those made it on Katorz and we're going to finish off some more in 2007.