VOIVOD's JASON NEWSTED: New Album Sounds Like Mixture Of METALLICA And VOIVOD

The forthcoming VOIVOD CD, "The Multiverse", sounds "exactly like METALLICA meets VOIVOD," according to former METALLICA and current VOIVOD bassist Jason Newsted, who has just finished mixing the album for a tentative Mar. 4, 2003 release. "I have retained the distortion, the constant bass distortion — a little tighter — but it's still there for VOIVOD the way it always was as far as VOIVOD goes," Newsted told Canada's Chart Attack. "But, added to it, is the girth of the METALLICA bass, the 'Black Album' bass sound, those kinds of things that sound huge, huge, huge, an enveloping low end. So both things exist, something that was never there before for a VOIVOD album. Everything else is still intact. Drumming is still fucking crazy, double bass drums every song, Snake is back a full 110 per cent and Piggy's fucked up tunings, Piggy chords exclusive to Piggy… all of that is still absolutely alive."

With regards to the upcoming album's lyrical content, Newsted explained, "It's [Snake's] own thing because of the translation from French. The direct translation cuts through all the shit. The thing is that no person that speaks English as their first language would write it that way because of the way we've been programmed. And when we hear it back so plainly, it's kind of like Yoda-speak, but way more intelligent. Because he doesn't use the little in between words that you would know from knowing the English language first — ands and ares and all these things — he goes boom, boom, boom. All the words next to each other, they can create sentences and/or phrases that mean five different things. On one of his best vocal performances, he says 'It's so good to see you again.' And I know what he means and we all know what he means. He's actually singing about the power of the music and what it does to people. But when he says that line, he's saying it to Michel, he's saying it to me, he's saying it to the crowd, he's saying it to the music, he's saying it to the microphone, he's saying it to his mind, he's saying it to the paper and pencil. I mean it's fuckin'... it's like that."