Written into the leftfield metal legend is the Faith No More/Soundgarden/Voivod tour of 1989-90. The tits-rad US trek captured three daring bands at different career points: FNM had gone supernova with “Epic” and then-new single “Falling To Pieces”; Cornell and crew’s Louder Than Love was underground hot and schoolyard cool for the Bruce Dickinson-endorsed “Big Dumb Sex”; Voivod stood at their creative apex with the inimitable Nothingface.

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Cool things about this live footage of Voivod trying out a new song called “Kaleidos” — (Thanks to MS reader Leslie for the correct song title) — at the Roadburn Festival this past Friday, April 15, in Tillburg, Holland:

• Snake reads from his lyric tablet;
• Dan Mongrain sounds so much like Piggy it’s almost supernatural;
• Away makes more sounds come out of his tiny drumkit than most so-called technical drummers these days can conjure up out of their 57-piece monstrosities;
• Snake prowls the stage like a starving feral dog;
• Blacky is back!;
• It reminds me of Dimension Hatröss-era Voivod;
• These guys pour out more energy than most bands half their age;
• The crowd seems rather complacent — until they unleash a collective roar of approval at the end;
• The awesome Away-illustrated hellscape backdrop;
• I’m flashing back to 1990 when I caught Voivod headline over Soundgarden and Faith No More (and blew them both away — no pun intended) at The Backroom in Austin, Texas.

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

There weren’t any real hot button topics this week, so we decided to just play a fun game that used to keep Vince and Axl occupied for many a lunch period when they were kids:

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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Metal Legacies is an ongoing memorial to extreme music pioneers who kicked the proverbial bucket way too soon.

This is only my third Metal Legacies entry, yet it is by far the hardest to write. As a college radio metal/hardcore DJ at The University of Texas from 1988-1990 I was a huge Voivod fanatic.

It was War and Pain that did me in first.

Then Rrröööaaarrr.

Then Killing Technology blew my mind.

By the time I started playing cassettes and LPs (remember those?) late Friday nights for the imaginatively titled The Metal Show, Voivod released what I believe was their greatest album, Dimension Hatröss. And while I admired every aspect of the Quebec, Canada-based futuristic space thrashers — from Snake’s wailing vocals to Blacky’s angular bass playing to Away’s soulfully robotic drumming and one-of-a-kind artwork — the key selling point was always Piggy’s guitar playing.

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So, there are two ways I can approach this review: I can do some haphazard research and come up with a semi-informed opinion of Voivod to judge their new album Infini, or disclose right out of the gate that Voivod is one of those blindspots all enthusiasts of metal have and judge Infini on its merits as a stand alone album. Clearly, I’ve chosen the latter, even if I didn’t intend to, and must admit that while I have not intentionally avoided Voivod, I’m not familiar with their work with the intimate detail that their many of their very dedicated followers are. A number of my favorite bands will mention them in their first breath when talking influences, and their current bassist played on my favorite Metallica album (and, of course, the three boring-to-horrible ones after that). But regardless, I’ve never made time for them, which, depending on who you ask, is a sin punishable by casting me out from the metal Garden of Eden and into the cold, harsh wasteland occupied by Fall Out Boy, or a wise decision on my part. Add to that the fact that Infini consists of the last recorded guitar tracks by Denis “Piggy” D’Amour – a founding member who succumbed to colon cancer in 2005 – and will most likely be their last studio album, and the latter choice is even more of an ordeal.

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