Band:	Voivod
Album:	Target Earth
Style:	Progressive metal
Release date:	January 21, 2013
Guest review by:	AndMetalForAll

Disc I
01. Target Earth
02. Kluskap O'Kom
03. Empathy For The Enemy
04. Mechanical Mind
05. Warchaic
06. Resistance
07. Kaleidos
08. Corps Étranger
09. Artefact
10. Defiance
11. Target Earth [live] [Mediabook bonus]
12. Man in the Trees [Die Kreuzen cover] [live] [Mediabook bonus]

Disc II [Live At Roadburn 2011] [Mediabook bonus]
01. The Prow
02. Ravenous Medicine
03. Overreaction
04. Experiment
05. Global Warning
06. Ripping Headaches
07. Nothingface
08. Forlorn
09. Voivod
10. Astronomy Domine [Pink Floyd cover]

These iconic avantgarde metallers return in 2013 with a new album, entitled Target Earth, four years after the credible Infini, released in 2009. In their most recent release the Canadian natives return, musically, to the old sound of Dimension Hatröss and Nothingface putting up a great musical showdown of progressive and technical metal.

Throughout the years, Voivod has fluctuated from sound to sound, adopting different styles and degrees of thrash and progressive metal. In Target Earth, the band releases one of the most technical and exquisite instrumental works of the last 10 years. The album is a powerful effort of thrash and progressive metal. "Kluskap O'Kom", "Corps Étranger" and "Mechanical Mind" show the band at their top form with complicated riffs and quite inspired instrumental arrangements all around. Michel "Away" Langevin's and Denis "Snake" Belanger's performances are something to take notice of. Although the band lost their most important member, Voivod was able to renew themselves in the last eight years putting together some exciting performances and showing a great unity as a group. Voivod was able to continue writing some intelligent music with very clever lyrics, just pay attention to "Empathy For The Enemy", "Mechanical Mind", "Resistance" and "Warchaic". Not only the album' lyrics, performances, and instrumental arrangements are quite good, its production sets the mood for solidifying the album as a great piece of thrash and progressive metal.

Although the band doesn't present its main lineup for quite some time now, after the death of Denis "Piggy" D'Amour, the band maintained their "head above the water" and presented very credible records with the classic Voivod sound. Despite the band's variation of sound in the last 15 or 20 years, the group maintained a classic personality. The album is not an instant classic but it is indeed an album worth listening and keeping. It's a progressive, heavy, thrashy, and fast album released right in the beginning of 2013.