Katorz

Katorz is the eleventh studio album by Canadian heavy metal band Voivod, released on July 25, 2006.

Demos for the album had been made, but before the band could properly begin recording it guitarist Denis D'Amour (a.k.a. Piggy) died on August 25, 2005, due to colon cancer. The guitar and bass tracks for Katorz had been recorded by D'Amour and bassist Jason Newsted (formerly of Metallica) on D'Amour's Mac at Newsted's house in California. When D'Amour would send the band a Pro Tools CD of the demos, he wrote "Katorz" on it, a phonetic spelling of "quatorze", the French word for fourteen. After D'Amour's death, Langevin and Bélanger recorded their drum and vocal tracks, respectively, to be added to those existing tracks. The song, "The X-Stream", is included in the videogame Guitar Hero II.

Personnel

 * Voivod
 * Denis Bélanger a.k.a. Snake – vocals
 * Denis D'Amour a.k.a. Piggy – guitar, interludes
 * Jason Newsted a.k.a. Jasonic – bass guitar, backing vocals
 * Michel Langevin a.k.a. Away – drums, interludes, artwork


 * Additional musicians
 * Ramachandra Borcar – interludes


 * Production
 * Glen Robinson – producer, mixing with Voivod
 * Dominique Lejeune, Olivier Ouimet – assistant engineers
 * Howie Weinberg – mastering at Masterdisk, New York