I think people are more ready now for our stuff, 'cause we've been told that we were 10 years [ahead of our time], and it's been 10 years, so here we are now. And I think the Seattle scene, bands like Nirvana, really opened doors. People are more open-minded and ready to listen to some other stuff than what they usually hear. And I think we got the real good stuff now, the stuff that we're doing now is still adventurous, and it's still not really traditional. I think people can swallow that. They're ready for us, and we just want to go there and play.
Denis Bélanger / Voivod interview, The Georgia Straight, 1993
VOIVOD released their seventh album, The Outer Limits, on this day in 1993. The title is taken from the 1960s television show, Au-delà du réel.
We recorded a few of them on video, I got a lot of musical inspiration from the soundtrack of the series. I used it in different places. Nothingface has got part of it, but now we're making the thing obvious.
Denis D'Amour / Voivod interview, Rip Magazine, 1993
The whole album is like a tribute to the old science fiction, but we called it The Outer Limits because we've all been influenced by that TV show, especially. It's like some bands like to sing about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll; we would rather sing about extraterrestrials.
Denis Bélanger / Voivod interview, The Georgia Straight, 1993
The beginning of some lineup changes: Blacky had left after the previous album Angel Rat (Pierre St. Jean is session bassist here) and Snake left after this album. Both returned years later. After The Outer Limits Eric Forrest joined the band and remained as bassist / vocalist for several albums.
On "Le Pont Noir":
It's an old Quebec legend," says Belanger, "but of course I modified a lot of things with that. The real story was that there was a bridge that was made by the devil. There were people that were riding in a canoe, and they wanted to see their family, but it was winter and they couldn't get any further, so they made a pact with the devil and the canoe started to fly. Stuff like that.
Denis Bélanger / Voivod interview, The Georgia Straight, 1993
I realized after reading folk tales from every country, every nationality, that it was all the same. It comes from one original point, nobody actually said that in a book; it's just the connection I made, reading books about the past and books about folk tales. I started to research, and I put the puzzle together. Nobody really did research about that. In fact, I was asking people who are specialists in folk tales, and they didn't know what I was talking about. I said, 'I read a Russian folk tale, and it's exactly the same as an American Indian folk tale. The animals are not the same, but it's the same story, the same moral.' Then I started to read about original Sumerian writing.
Michel Langevin / Voivod interview, Rip Magazine, 1993
You can read about Piggy’s guitar setup at this time here: Guitar Magazine, December 1993.
