A clanking, churning, violent punk robot on the warpath. Hard to believe that such ear pollution was readily available to kids like me back in the '80s! Scary stuff. But Voivod were something else entirely, a real avant-garde bunch of French Canadian weirdo's who painted metallic pictures of distorted horizons, rusted buildings, smoking wastelands, surreal dreamscapes, chocking engines crashing to the smouldering ground and spiky, militant armies marching to death through some iron age of disgust.'War & Pain' was one part Bathory, the other half something unclassifiable that creaked somewhere between tinny thrash, raw punk and tribal, holocaustic evil. I first heard the opening track, 'Voivod' on a 'Speed Kills' compilation and marvelled at its eerie into which soon melted into the frenetic and disjointed rhythms, those responsible being spitting vocal maniac Snake, drum punisher and sleeve creator, Away, Blacky on the 'blower bass' and Piggy 'burning metal axe', according to the record details.
Lyrically, the band shift from industrial horror, wasted oblivion and heavy metal message, from the machine gun rifferama drama of 'Warriors Of Ice' to the bastardization of 'Suck Your Bone' with its almost classic solo's and genial lyrics, whereas 'Iron Gang' is a shuffling, robotic thrash assault, but personal favourite has to be the Sabbath-esque 'War & Pain' with its almost 'War Pigs' into which halts and then sprawls into some chasm of noisome war.
This is violent stuff, futuristic and yet primal, black metal and yet surreal, only a hint at what this band would go on to offer.
8.5/10
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