VOIVOD Documentary In The Works

MTV.com reports: After Canadian documentarian Sam Dunn interviewed members of VOIVOD for his upcoming movie "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey", VOIVOD recruited him to make a film about their group. "It was a real honor to be asked, and we've already started shooting," said Dunn. "The documentary is going to be about Piggy's life [the band's founding guitarist, Denis D'Amour, who passed away of colon cancer last year] and the making of the new record and how those are tied together." No release date has been set for the project. "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey" will come out as a double-DVD on May 23.

As previously reported, a brand new VOIVOD song, entitled "The X-Stream", has been made available for streaming at MP3.com. The track comes off the Canadian pioneering metal band's upcoming album, "Katorz", due in June on The End Records in North America and Nuclear Blast Records in Europe.

VOIVOD recorded and mixed the album with producer Glen Robinson (ANNIHILATOR, TEA PARTY, GWAR) at Multisons studio in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and mastered the CD in New York.

The follow-up to 2003's "Voivod", "Katorz" is the first album in the band's 20-plus-year career that did not feature D'Amour working alongside his bandmembers in the studio.

In order to record "Katorz", drummer Michael "Away" Langevin, singer Denis "Snake" Belanger and bassist Jason "Jasonic" Newsted utilized all of the guitar parts that Piggy had recorded for the record on his laptop with ProTools before his death.

In a recent interview with Greg Prato of Billboard.com, Langevin had the following to say about the upcoming CD: "It came about in unfortunate circumstances, but the result is mind-blowing. Right before his departure, Denis explained to me that he had recorded all the tracks that we had been working on with Jason and Snake for the past two years. He had recorded that on his laptop with ProTools, and even though he would have preferred to re-do the whole thing in a real studio, there was a chance that we could use the tracks. We built the album based on the guitar tracks, which was difficult, because normally, we go the other way around — we start with the drums, and then add stuff on top. But it sounds amazing."

"'Katorz' means 14 — it's the 14th effort of the band," Belanger added. "The first time Piggy put it together and gave us the demo was on CD, [and he had written] 'Katorz', which is not the right way to write it. Of course [there is] an emotional side to it, so we took the demo, and the design of it will be his handwriting."