Denis ‘Piggy’ D’Amour
“When I think of Piggy, I think of constant innovation and progression. That run of Voivod albums from Killing Technology through to The Outer Limits shows how he developed his own vocabulary of chords and style. Today you can hear it in everyone from Opeth to Foo Fighters.
“When I first heard him I was about 15, 16 and into Carcass and Napalm Death and Celtic Frost. I’d find these bands on TV shows such as Raw Power and read about them in Kerrang! magazine. I’d never heard King Crimson or Van der Graaf Generator, so I don’t know where the influences came from – I thought Piggy had invented progressive rock. When he was playing all these dissonant chords like Keith Emerson would, but on a guitar, I’d never heard anything like that before, so to hear the intro to Psychic Vacuum, where he comes in on a really dissonant flat five chord, it was revelatory. I was into quite nasty, thrashy music, but none of them had the chordal sophistication, or unique vocabulary, of Voivod.
“Like Cardiacs or Faith No More, Voivod live in their own soundworld. There was no one else really like them, especially in the context of late-80s, early-90s metal. As a young musician, hearing those chords and prog leanings, it was bloody exciting. Me and Kev [Feazey, TFATD bassist] would have been 14 and 13 and had a thrash metal band that was rubbish but like a Celtic Frost/Voivod tribute band, very poorly played. We didn’t have the skill but it was very educational to try and at least reach the bar they set. We had no idea how to play like that, but attempting to do so was really influential for us.
“Because each album was completely different – on Angel Rat they’re an indie rock band, on The Outer Limits they’re Floydy-Hawkwindy – this was brave and cool and unusual. Voivod were all very ambitious players, and even though they’ve never hit the big time, for certain people and musicians they’re a key band. When metal became more open-minded, bands like Soundgarden and Faith No More took what Voivod did and moved it on, and anyone playing ambitious metal riffs now, from Mastodon to Neurosis, probably owes a debt to Voivod, and Celtic Frost and Watchtower. Piggy helped the scene evolve into what it is today.” JK