Unitron With The Outer Limits, Voivod made an amazing meeting of space rock and alt metal that everything starting with Nothingface was leading up to. With Snake temporarily away from the band, and new guy Eric Forrest, the band does a near 180 in sound. Negatron is a blistering industrial thrashing beast of an album, and takes no prisoners.

While the mechanical ant on the cover is somehow even cheesier than the ones in the classic Sci-Fi film Them!, this album rains down as much sludgy groove as it can. Eric Forrest's red-faced screaming is so caustic and unapologetic, Insect says it all. He can do melody too though, in songs like Nanoman where he takes a Snake-esque approach to it. Musically it's along the lines of industrial bands like Fear Factory, Red Harvest, and Treponem Pal but with Voivod's unique touch.

Negatron often gets a bad rep, maybe because of how much whiplash it is after the previous three albums or maybe it's the new vocalist. Whatever the reason, Negatron is a great rage-filled monster mosher.

Conor Fynes 'Negatron' - Voivod (4/10)

For whatever reason, there came a point in Voivod's career where everything went to hell. up until 'The Outer Limits', Voivod were releasing album after album of classic, engaging, and even groundbreaking material, turning the thrash metal world on its side with a spacey, forward-thinking approach. Sadly, Voivod's vocalist Snake Belanger leaves after an impressive tenure with the band, and in comes his replacement, Eric Forrest. Not to mention that Voivod is just a three-piece at this point, the band has all but split up for all intents and purposes. What is left is a hollow shell of a band that once created some of the best albums metal has ever seen. Although the band would eventually pick themselves back up with Snake's return, 'Negatron' and its follow-up 'Phobos' represent the darkest period of Voivod's career.

AWhile band members have changed, so has the style. The music here would be completely unrecognizable from Voivod's signature prog-thrash sound, were it not for Piggy's distinct style of playing. Incidentally, Piggy's dissonant edge is the best thing about 'Negatron'. As for the rest, Voivod has gone down a fairly lo-fi avenue, throwing away their growing sense of melody in exchange for aggression and noise. In a sense, it is quite like Voivod's two earliest albums, but as all 'back-to-roots' albums usually end up, it doesn't possess the same power. Eric Forrest's contributions are the biggest disappointment. Although some of his vocals manage to get a strong aggression across, he usually sounds like he is trying to scream parts that should have been sung by Snake. Perhaps this is just a fan's bias, but the music feels the loss.

'Negatron' is a darker album than much Voivod work, and that does work to its benefit. I think that the style they chose to go in here is not inherently bad, but the uninspiring songwriting and lackluster ideas lead the album down a path to mediocrity that is best left forgotten by Voivod and their fans.

UMUR "Negatron" is the 8th full-length studio album by Canadian progressive/thrash metal act Voivod. The album was released in December 1995 by Mausoleum Records. Lead vocalist Snake left the band after "The Outer Limits (1993)" and as original bassist Blacky had left the band a couple of years earlier (the bass on "The Outer Limits" was handled by session member Pierre St. Jean), Voivod recruited Eric Forrest, who would handle both the lead vocals and the bass playing on "Negatron", making Voivod a three-piece for a while.

Eric Forrest is more of the angry shouting type frontman as opposed to Snake who had a more melodic and punk influenced style and as the music has also taken on a more aggressive thrashy direction the sound on "Negatron" is a far cry from the more progressive/alternative sound of the last couple of albums. There´s a "back to the roots" vibe on the album, but ultimately "Negatron" doesn´t really sound like the early thrash metal releases by the band either. "Negatron" features elements from quite a few music styles including thrash metal, groove metal, industrial metal, alternative metal and some progressive leanings too.

The 11 tracks, 57:24 minutes long album starts out really strong with the opening trio of songs: "Insects", "Project X" and "Nanoman". The latter being the melodic highlight of the album and one of the only times Voivod sound slightly like they did on the last couple of albums. But from there the tracks become harder and harder to tell apart and remember. It´s not that the rest of the tracks are of poor quality or anything like that and listened to one by one they are actually quite enjoyable and powerful material, but as a whole they don´t stand out enough from each other). The closing track "D.N.A (Don't No Anything)" is not easily forgot though and that´s not in a positive way. On that track Voivod goes all the way into industrial territory and fall flat on their face in the process. It´s not a good way to end an otherwise decent album and I find that I have more fond memories of "Negatron" when I simply stop the album before "D.N.A (Don't No Anything)" and imagine that "Drift" is the last track on the album.

I guess my review came out a bit more negative than I had intended, because I actually enjoy "Negatron" quite a bit, it´s just overall a release with very few highlights, one awful track and a too long playing time. It´s grown on me over time and I enjoy the album much more these days than back when it was originally released but I still can´t give it more than a 3 - 3.5 star rating.

kluseba After several line-up changes, Voivod continued as a trio and explored a completely new territory. From a warmer and progressive rock sound, they went to a cold and industrial sound which is very uneasy to listen to. Heavily shredding and dissonant guitars, heavy weight drums sounding like thunder and an aggressively roaring base guitar create the new musical universe of Voivod. The more physical and technical the creature Voivod becomes in the lyrics and stories, the more industrial and artificial becomes the sound of the band. Alongside with this comes the voice of the new singer E-Force which is more shrieking, more aggressive and more desperate than the voice of their previous and actual singer Snake. I would say that the voice of E-Force fits perfectly to the new sound of Voivod and he is doing and appropriate job.

All those changes are very interesting and innovating but the fact that pulls this album down is that is very uneasy to listen to. It is very depressive, very intense, but it is always repeating itself and after some really good songs in the beginning, it gets annoying and dumb to listen the whole time to this heavy and weird stuff. The listener needs a little break, a little change of style, a little time to breathe or think, but Voivod don't show any mercy or pity and continue always in the same style. The album slowly pulls you under in a parallel universe or even directly in hell , literally and musically.

Songs like "Cosmic Conspiracy" have many breaks, are very strange and they only grow on you after you have listened to them at least several times. Some songs like the very dumb "Planet Hell" or "Project X" are even more strange and difficult to listen to and I don't get an approach to them. That is really frustrating, because I've spent a lot of time on those songs and listened to them carefully.

The highlights of this album are the straight and fresh sounding opener "Insect" which introduces you directly to the new universe of Voivod, the atmospheric and epic title track "Negatron" and "Nanoman". This last song is somehow the "hit" of the album, he is very straight, very diversified and has a very simple, but intense chorus and an amazing guitar solo. I got directly addicted to this song and it is without any doubt one of my favourite ones of the band.

In the end of the album, there are sadly some filler songs that are really just disturbing, annoying and dumb. With a few breaks and one or two easier songs, this could have been an even more diversified album, but as it is today, this album finds rarely its way in my radio or music centre. With their next effort "Phobos" Voivod had corrected their mistakes and created a really disturbing masterpiece while this album was their first try, the experimentation towards a new kind of sound and universe.

Sure, there is a lot to discover here, but it's really heavy and weird stuff that you can't listen to very often.