OHAI VOIVOD TAB BOOK!
Most internet-heroes harness the power of modern connectivity to make us laugh, show us naked pictures, and aware travelers to reliable drug spots in unfamiliar cities. But to a guitar player, the most valuable and least acclaimed cyber-saint is an author of internet guitar tabs. Really! It’s a painstaking, thankless chore to discern tricky guitar parts and then, like, transcribe them in that screwy makeshift staff made of dashes and shit. Worst of all, those efforts are compensated with bitchy comments from buttmad basement shredders, all disputing bends and harmonics. Ugh.
But let’s take this moment to hoist to our shoulders my personal god, a tabber with the name ClankTheRobot. Here’s why: Despite worshipping Voivod’s Dennis “Piggy” D’Amour for like two decades, and wanting to learn from his guitarage, I never fucked with Voivod jamz. Really, I was waiting for an official book cuz to play Piggy’s stuff incorrectly would be roughly equivalent to sexing a girl in her nose: Kinda in the ballpark, but not really. And liable to cause major frustration. And screams of pain. What an unfortunate analogy. Sorry.
Anyway, Voivod was never big enough to warrant an official tab book from a fancy publisher — those honors go to big sellers and nerd shredders — but the aforementioned ClankTheRobot saved my day with his ace tabs of several Voivod classics on the internet (as well as Converge, Extol, and Voivod’s sister band, ALL). My hero! It was as though his tabs just swept me past all the groping, guesswork, and groaning that’s fine for jamz in my theory-skills comfort zone, but is fruitless and grotesque with otherworldly stuff like Voivod or Thought Industry or Old or Realm.
Which brings us at last to the awesome news that Piggy’s replacement, Dan “Chewy” Mongrain, is authoring an official tab book for Voivod’s classic Dimension Hatröss album. Already a hero for perpetuating Voivod after Piggy’s death, Mongrain must be gunning for a Nobel cuz his efforts mean that guitarers get a classy, easy to read book that’s unassailably accurate. That’s awesome! Life rulez! Pre-order the shit here!
-ADF
Check out live footage of Voivod’s new jam “Target Earth” here. Pre-order your Dimension Hatröss tab book here. Send major props to ClankTheRobot on his youtube channel here.
