VOIVOD Bassist Clarifies 'Terrorist' Comment

Bassist Jean-Yves Theriault (a.k.a. Blacky) of the Canadian metal pioneers VOIVOD has released a statement clarifying the comments he made during an interview with HardTimes.ca regarding the recent U.S. presidential elections.

Speaking at the Trois Rivières Metalfest, which was held November 7-8, 2008 at the Bâtisse Industrielle in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada, Blacky said about the President-elect Barack Obama, "I think that the guy is genuine, he's honest, and he really wants to talk to all sides — internationally and even in their own country [U.S.]. He wants to sit and talk with people, and talk with people who want to talk. Because there's people who don't want to talk, they just want their own way. And they're crazy dictators, or whatever you wanna call them. The biggest terrorist ever, it's been the U.S. — it's not been [Osama] Bin Laden. These guys are individual terrorists, but the wide terrorism, it's a country doing it. And they wanted to crucify [Bill] Clinton because he got a blowjob and he said he never got a blowjob. There's a guy [George W. Bush] who started a war without any freakin' reason, killing, like, I don't know how many people died in Iraq. No one judged that guy. He's gonna go out free and unpunished and…"

Away (VOIVOD drummer Michel Langevin): "Rich."

Blacky: [Laughs] "Rich, yeah."

HardTimes.ca: When 9/11 happened, the U.S. were global victims for the first time. Do you feel as though that kind of excused other things that they've done?

Away: "Of course. For a short period of time, people were blinded by revenge and all that. The Republicans jumped at it and seized the opportunity to say, 'Yeah, we need to kick some terrorist ass.' And everybody went, 'Yeah!' And if you went, 'No, no. A lot of other people will die, like children…', people were like, 'You're not a patriot,' and all that. Yeah, for a short while, it was to their advantage to attack immediately. And it's just now, eight years later, people came back to their senses and realized that it was a big mistake to have the Bush dynasty at the power for so long — they totally switched the planet around and now there's a lot of work to be done to make it back to where it was. Since Obama won the election, I think people have a new vision of America now. People were pretty disappointed with the fact that Bush was elected twice — in a shady way, but still he got enough votes so that he could steal it; well, so people say. Now people have another vision of America. There's a bit of hope there."

Blacky: "Except that you have to look at how many people actually voted to the Republican [presidential candidate John McCain]. There's still something like 46, 47 percent of the population who did vote for the Republican. So it hasn't changed, really. There's a new boss over there at the White House, but we'll see if it's gonna get a little bit better. The U.S. is a scary country. Like many other countries. Even Canada — look who's in power now. [Laughs]"

After HardTimes.ca uploaded the 10-minute interview with Michel Langevin and Jean-Yves Theriault to YouTube, Blacky posted the following statement in the "Commentary" section of the video-sharing web site:

"Sorry if I offended anyone by talking against the U.S., I was referring to the current administration and not the entire population of the United States. I have many amazing friends in the U.S., some of which may have different views compared to mine and I respect that. I suppose we all have our opinion about things."