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“Killing Technology” è la terza fase di quel processo di destrutturazione del genere thrash che condurrà i Voivod alle pagine più belle della loro carriera. È l’orrore asettico del silicio drogato dei circuiti, dell’intelligenza artificiale votata alla carneficina. È il cyber thrash, la visione malata e distorta di un futuro apocalittico di alienazione tecnologica, di una quotidianità fattasi incubo per essere divenuta avvezza agli orrori delle radiazioni, dei laser che tagliano a fette il cielo, delle mutazioni che sconvolgono i corpi.
È il 1987. I Voivod hanno da poco smesso di disseminare “guerra e dolore” (’84) e di ruggire in faccia al mondo di “fottersi e morire” (’86) e in molti si aspettano (e forse lo aspettano ancora oggi..) l’ennesimo disco violento, intransigente e privo di compromessi. La scena musicale internazionale (col thrash assunto al ruolo di genere estremo di riferimento), l’attitudine del gruppo dimostrata nelle precedenti uscite, e persino l’artwork (ennesimo parto dell’estro figurativo del solito Away), paiono dover escludere particolari stravolgimenti nella produzione della band. Parte la title track... e tutto sembra fin troppo nella norma. Speed - thrash anni ’80, diretto e immediato, da headbanging puro: strofe e ritornello si alternano come prescritto nel manuale del Giovane Metallaro. Persino le linee vocali si presentano più ordinate ed ordinarie: Snake sembra quasi voler addomesticare i propri latrati, cercando di conciliare il tentativo di un maggiore controllo sul cantato con l’irrinunciabile violenza della propria interpretazione. Nel frattempo ci si accorge dei progressi della band: il songwriting s’è fatto più maturo, più compatto. Piggy sembra essere riuscito nel proprio intento: amalgamare e far crescere il gruppo tecnicamente, fornendogli i mezzi per dare voce alle proprie visioni musicali.
Ma proprio quando si sta per prendere l’etichettatrice, proprio quando si è pronti ad archiviare il tutto con un “bello, ma già sentito”, inizia la rivolta. È il caos a prendere il sopravvento, lo stravolgimento della forma canzone, dei canoni del genere. Suoni, tempi e voci filtrate si mescolano e si contorcono: è il multiverso voivodiano che inizia a prendere forma, avvolgendosi su se stesso in cerchi concentrici e moti perpetui di accelerazioni e stacchi. Ogni singolo brano (con la sola eccezione di “Ravenous Medicine”: forse l’episodio più tradizionale del pacchetto) finirà per seguire questo non-modello: una prima parte rivolta al passato e al presente, ancora legata agli stilemi del metal estremo imperversante negli anni di uscita del disco, e una seconda, proiettata nel futuro della band e della musica metal in generale, frammentazione e sfaccettatura del monolite thrash. Il risultato, per certi versi, rimane invariato, ma mutati sono i mezzi utilizzati per raggiungerlo (causando, da questo disco in poi, croniche storciature di naso da parte dei puristi): una pesantezza non più imputabile all’intransigenza del sound (“Maybe because we are heavier than all destructors”, cantava Snake nel precedente “RRROOOAAARRR”), ma fondata sulla lunghezza dei brani, oltre che sulla complessità, imprevedibilità e, in alcuni casi, inacessibilità delle strutture e delle soluzioni compositive.
Accantonate le gesta barbariche del “grand master of fast purification” Korgull, il palcoscenico su cui prendono vita gli incubi apocalittici dei quattro canadesi non è più il medioevo post atomico dei primi dischi, ma un nuovo e più evoluto scenario futuristico, permeato di un orrore ancor più inquietante perché prossimo a divenir tangibile realtà. È il fantasma della primavera nucleare del 1986 (anno del disastro di Chernobyl) a ispirare profezie di alienazioni tecnologiche, di ergastoli spaziali (l'eccellente “Forgotten In Space”), di mutanti e uomini ridotti a cavie da laboratorio (“Ravenous Mdecine”), di un destino di distruzione e di schiavitù al progresso che sembra essere già scritto nelle pagine dell’evoluzione umana (“the evolution can't run without damage”). Quel progresso scientifico e tecnologico di cui non possiamo più fare a meno e che esigerà, prima o poi, il proprio tributo di sangue (“Don't be scared, the engines exploded, but it's just a technological risk”).
Ascoltato col senno di poi, “Killing Technology” soffre, inevitabilmente, il confronto con le produzioni immediatamente successive della band: “Dimension Hatross” (’88) e, soprattutto, “Nothingface” (’89). Eppure gli vanno riconosciuti alcuni meriti che, senza renderlo un capolavoro, ne aumentano la qualità e l’importanza. Forse non sarà paragonabile, per genio, inventiva e sperimentazione, al contemporaneo “Into The Pandemonium”, ma è con questo disco che D’Amour e soci capiscono di potercela fare, di avere i numeri per realizzare quella svolta musicale che li condurrà a miscelare pregevolmente metal, psichedelia e progressive. È il coraggio di osare, il tentativo, magari ancora acerbo, di dare una nuova veste, quella dell’imprevedibilità, ad un genere che, di lì a pochi anni, avrebbe detto tutto - o quasi - quello che aveva da dire.
È il seme della sperimentazione che si fa spazio tra le distorsioni… timidamente… prima di prendere il sopravvento.
Elenco tracce testi e video
01 Killing Technology (07:35)
Thinking about another project
How the hell are they gonna make it
Anyway nobody's gonna object
Even if they make shit
Now you better get wise
Lasers passing through the sky
For me there's no alternative
This sphere is a bad place to live
Growing technology
Fooling technology
Killing technology!!!
The star wars have started up
The new invention is coming out
Making a spider web over the atmosphere
To make them sure that we can't get out of here
Computers controlling your functions
Seems like we got electronic alienation
Trading children for a new kind of robot
Waiting for the old people to disappear
Growing technology
Fooling technology
Killing technology!!!
Use the killing technology
How can I destroy the enemy
Security plans are not easy to find
That's my generation, the nonsense time
You lose your function
You're just a substitute
You lose your function
Glad to see you change
You've got automatic moves
Take your pills to have energy
And sit down in your robotic living room
People are gonna progress
Who knows whether we'll get more or less
Some say it's the beginning of the end
Some say they've got our lives in their hands
Growing technology
Fooling technology
Killing technology!!!
Look at the chaos, how much does it cost
The circuits gleam
Push this buttom, memory runs
You're gonna pay for this
Ready or not, ready or not !!!
Tomorrow is the fear
The fear will come from the sky, from behind!
Tomorrow disappears
The fear will come from the sky, from behind!
Tomorrow is the fear
The fear will come from the sky, from behind!
We are connected
02 Overreaction (04:46)
It's coming over you!!
Can you see the phosphorescence of the factory
Moving away, out of this territory
The systems became overload
The warning lights were on that night
Nobody knew what was going on
But it will be here for months
Or even years
It's coming over me !!
The ugly underside of the nuclear energy
Brings us today this atomic calamity
The malfunction of the instruments
For this blunders we have to go to hell
It's coming over us
Don't be scared, the engines exploded
But it's just a technological risk
And this thing will continue throughout the ages,
the evolution can't run without damage
Mother nature can't hear you
The China Syndrome will die much later than you....
The China Syndrome...
In the air, it smells bad,
Feel the disease, the nuclearchy
We're lucky, we'll die young
It's hard to endure, to be a mutant
The transformation, is almost complete
Research has no end, containing the power
The dangerous results, it's not our fault
Create the force, we got no fear
Lock the doors, we're engineers
Awaiting to suffocate, purchasing the program
Vomiting the pollution, of energy games
Create the force, we got no fear
Lock the doors, we're engineers
Welcome to the China Syndrome
It's an over...Overreaction !!!
03 Tornado (06:05)
Nature deadly twisters
War of winds strikes again
You live in a nice neighborhood
As nice as it will be after
They drop down from the clouds
Completely out man's control
Some day it's gonna catch me
The tornado is right behind
It picks me up to overseas
The tornado is right there
Cumulonimbus storms arrive
Lightning flashes a hundred miles around
Electrical collision course
Creates the elephant trunk
Creeping and looking for your home
Sucking anything from the ground
Go 25.000 feet in the air
The deadlist of all thunderheads
The strong winds and the vacuum
Are gonna take you to the heart of the storm
Moving and turning
No escape, you disappear
It rips you off, keeps you in
Rises you up and pushes you out
Into the guts of the tornado
Get high by the suction of the funnel
Spinning at 300 miles an hour
And trying to outwit this monster
Moving and turning
No escape, you disappear
It rips you off, keeps you in
Rises you up and pushes you out
The frontal attack, now is in the past
Is it finished, or is it coming back?
No one knows, where it goes
Am I safe ? Am I gone with it ?
Running scared !!
Do it quickly, if you see it
There is no time, for a warning
The tornado has struck, hope you have some luck
Dust will make you blind, nothing you can find
Running scared !
Tornado ! Tornado ! Tornado !!
05 Forgotten in Space (06:12)
All systems go !!
The jailship is flying high
From the ground, to out of sight
They pay their crimes, locked inside
Where they go, the judge knows
They did to many murders
Then fell into the crater
They made too many speeches
Against what the people believe
Getting the no limit sentence
For them it's the last stop
The treason made upon them
Upset coz there's no way to return
All systems go, blow the reactors
But where do we go? We don't know!
The prisoners, looking mad
There's no color aboard this flight
Computer station look them all
Deep in the hole too many echoes
The space jail center program
Recorded, numbered, classified
This bunch of desperate guys
Changing to sub-rat humans
And then in special cases
You've gotta be quiet
If you're not what they want
They're gonna throw you out in space
All systems go, blow the reactors
But where do we go? We don't know!
Cylindrical habitat modules
Let me out of here, and I heard my name
It's time they said ! Forgotten in space !
Dressed with a skin tight pressure suit
Swimming in the universe
It's the best place you can be
It's the last place you will be
It's boring to spend time
In the jail with no gravity
Suspended in nothingness
Awaiting your own liberty
Just one hour, not too much oxigen(2X)
Hydrocarbonic smog, methane ice crystals
Ultraviolet rays in the galaxy core
Rotations and orbits of somebody
Atoms and molecules through my body
Just half an hour, not too much oxigen(2X)
You're forgotten in space....In space!!
06 Ravenous Medicine (04:24)
Another emergency truck keeps rolling fast
Two lane highway and they run on the wrong track
You still don't know that you're never going back
You're going to the science hospital
You guess that your body is still alive
They estimate you're in pretty good health
Good shape for some of our sadistic tests
Doctor said you must stay in bed
Surgical scourge on you
Surgical scourge on you
Electric shock through you
Electric shock through you
Feel the scalpel they cut you with
Going into the experimental room
How much radiation can your body stand?
You did very well, you'll feel better soon
The red cross is turning black
Wake up in another department
You see the nurse with blood on her clothes
They got another experience for today
Maybe the worst of them
Diagnosing the pain, the ravenous medicine
Discovering the cure, the ravenous medicine
Died through illness, the ravenous medicine
Don't care how many organs you gave
Injecting the drugs
'Till you become the slave
Turn off the machine that keeps your heart beating
They're gonna do it to you !!
07 Order of the Blackguards (04:29)
The men in the black forces
Listen to your conscience
Stopping the evolution
The books are the essence
United to burn anything that can make a stand
The church is an empire, the no way direction
No matter what you say
They run completely blind
No matter what you wrote
Shut up you lie !
And the books are burning hard
Your mind is running slow
Your mind is running slow
Your mind is running slow
Light up a fire in the middle of the city
Burning all the thoughts
Of those who got some ideas
The mission will continue throughout time
Manipulation of all fragile minds
Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn!...
Down! Down! Down! Down!...
Don't want to endure it anymore
Much too radical
The future intelligence falls into enemy hands
Don't want to hear it anymore
Much too political
Spending the time in ignorance
Computers blow up
By the shock of the present
The blackguards control
The blackguards control
The blackguards control
08 This Is Not an Exercise (06:21)
Don't adjust your Brain
It's now, it's real, real, real
Woken up by a lot of noise this morning
The day begins by the fear
I'm looking through the window at this outside
Something's happening
Smashed up cars, fucked up traffic
People plunged in their TV set
Watch to see the daily bad news
Stand to know who's gonna pay
Burning, destroying, pulverising
They can't take the time to realise
Talking, screaming, protesting
All that time spent
Let's start this bad surprise
But today is not like another day
Listen to the radio
Caution, all alert is on
They're gonna blow your bones away
You know the human history
The street must be running red
The citizens can't believe
That they're all the victims
And this is it, you better watch it live
I wake you up, this is no an exercise!!
Don't adjust your Brain
It's now, it's real, real, real
You stand mute today
It's all over, shaking the ground
With their foolish toys
Your mind turns to broil
You keep yourself away
It's all over, shaking the ground
Now I change my opinion about you
I can't trust you, not even my friends
Dehumanization and the lost cause
What's the future, it's up to me...
No one's gonna say, that's a crime
Who's gonna say
There is not too much time !!
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