Vintage Video: Voivod’s “Ravenous Medicine”

Thursday, 24th April 2014

Today, a video created in the fashion of Voivod’s “Ravenous Medicine” would probably fall under the banner of a parody. Blatantly low-budget, pieced together with homemade graphics, and adorned with isolated band member performance clips, it’s basically the antithesis to plastic MTV shine of the times. But that’s what you do to get your point across, which in the case for the Canadians, is to protest against animal testing.

The song (featured on the band’s 1987 sci-fi stormer Killing Technology) is also one of Voivod’s most jarring. Relying on Denis “Piggy” D’Amour’s limitless supply of bizarre, contorted riffs, along with the punk-on-thrash cackle of Denis “Snake” Belanger, “Ravenous Medicine” was thrash at its most obtuse and unique. The band would go on to make one more tried-and-true thrash album (1988’s Dimension Hatross) before diving headfirst into less metallic fronts in the early 90s, but “Ravenous Medicine” is Voivod at its peak. The Red Cross is starting to black indeed!

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