Canada's pioneering metal band
VOIVOD have set July 25, 2006 as the North American release date (via
The End Records) for their much-anticipated new album,
"Katorz".
As previously reported,
VOIVOD recorded and mixed the album with producer
Glen Robinson (
ANNIHILATOR,
TEA PARTY,
GWAR) at
Multisons studio in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and mastered the CD in New York.
The follow-up to 2003's
"Voivod",
"Katorz" is the first album in the band's 20-plus-year career that did not feature founding guitarist
Denis "Piggy" D'Amour working alongside his bandmembers in the studio.
D'Amour died August 26, 2005 in a Montreal hospital from complications of advanced colon cancer.
In order to record
"Katorz", singer
Denis "Snake" Belanger, drummer
Michael "Away" Langevin, and bassist
Jason "Jasonic" Newsted utilized all of the guitar parts that
Piggy had recorded for the record on his laptop with ProTools before his death.
In a recent interview with
Greg Prato of
Billboard.com,
Langevin had the following to say about the upcoming CD: "It came about in unfortunate circumstances, but the result is mind-blowing. Right before his departure,
Denis explained to me that he had recorded all the tracks that we had been working on with
Jason and
Snake for the past two years. He had recorded that on his laptop with ProTools, and even though he would have preferred to re-do the whole thing in a real studio, there was a chance that we could use the tracks. We built the album based on the guitar tracks, which was difficult, because normally, we go the other way around — we start with the drums, and then add stuff on top. But it sounds amazing."
"
'Katorz' means 14 — it's the 14th effort of the band,"
Belanger added. "The first time
Piggy put it together and gave us the demo was on CD, [and he had written]
'Katorz', which is not the right way to write it. Of course [there is] an emotional side to it, so we took the demo, and the design of it will be his handwriting."
Check out the track
"The X-Stream", taken from the upcoming CD, in streaming audio format at
MP3.com.
