Its leaked and its glorious

Haven't really dug Voivod the couple of times I've previously listened to their albums, but this was pretty fun.

Long live Chewy.

I was really sad to see Blacky go again, but Chewy makes up for it a million times over.

Quite enjoyable, it has a high replay value.

After the death of the very likeable and extremely talented Piggy aka Denis D'Amour, I almost completely lost interest and respect for Voivod. Interest simply because the material squeezed after his death was sub-par, and respect because the riffs left behind by Piggy on his death bed were squeezed dry for more cash. Although due to friendship Piggy never took song-writing credit only for himself, it is safe to say that he was the driving force of the band, being the man who wrote most of the riffs and melodies while the other band members pitched in afterwards. Years after his death, after squeezing 2 albums with his remaining riffs came Target Earth, a good album overall, this time with a good production, which abandoned the 'hard rock' influenced sound the band has been adopting since 2003. The adoption of a hard rock sound was one of the main reasons I lost interest in Voivod. A band that was renowned for not giving a fuck about mainstream music, not giving a fuck about what the average metalhead would expect from their music and not giving a fuck about genre convention to make formulaic music pretty much confirmed that they've run out of creativity.

Nobody in the metal scene can emulate Piggy's dissonance like riffing style simply because he was born with this talent and with the talent to distinguish a good, catchy riff from a boring, lethargic one. But that does not mean he had a copyright over this style of playing. Mongrain (Chewy), a long-time Voivod fan at least tried on Target Earth, with average results. However, judging the music on this EP, it seems that he is getting better. The self-titled track in particular is very catchy, with a great main riff and a nice mid-tempo part, although there is a part in Nothingface which is used here. Mongrain is a good guitarist. By today's standards an extremely good one. Being able to emulate Piggy without embarrassing himself is a great achievement. But he is nowhere near the song-writing genius that Piggy was. "Fall" is decent. The rest are forgettable, particularly the Hawkwind cover mainly because Snake is no longer the versatile, impressive vocalist that he was before his departure in 1994. The production is slightly weaker here than on Target Earth, but much better than the material released before it.

Unfortunately, Voivod today is more like a cover band of itself. Without Piggy it will never be the same. Although even if he were still alive and kicking I just doubt that the band would've been capable of dishing in more quality records like the first 7. How many bands managed to maintain a streak of 7 high quality records? Very few. You can count them on your fingers.

Good tracks: Post-Society.

Ok tracks: Fall.

Forgettable: Forever Mountains, We Are Connected, Silver Machine.

Kinda like old times, kinda good stuff, yet I'm finding myself somewhat disappointed with this EP. I think I've listened to all these songs before and listening now again there seemed to be no trace of memory of any of them. I'm not arguing here that the songs are bad or nothing, but when dealing with Voivod, I think the standard is a bit higher than what this album represents. Hard to say if, to me, it's average or good; probably 6.5 would be more accurate than either of those.