In 1984, Metal Blade Records of Van Nuys, California, released the fifth edition of its Metal Massacre series, which had already unleashed such bands as RATT, Metallica, Slayer, and Lizzy Borden onto an unwitting music-buying public. On the second track, among future stalwarts Overkill, Fates Warning, and Metal Church as well as no-hit wonders Lethyl Synn and Jesters of Destiny, was an oddly named band from Jonquière, Quebec: Voïvod, spelled Voi Vod on the album cover. Voïvod’s four members were Blacky, Away, Piggy, and Snake.
The band was new, had played its first concert just the was mostly covers with a couple of originals. The sound is atrocious, the band positioned, apparently, at the bottom of a well, a cheap recorder placed haphazardly in a bucket, instrumental separation not even an afterthought. The band chose one of the original tunes, “Condemned to the Gallows,” for its entry. The song was, happily, rerecorded, and the January 1984 studio take is an improvement, hinting at the band’s potential with its mix of nascent thrash metal and punk but with a typical flat, unsubtle Metal Blade Records sound.
