This year, progressive heavy metal band Voivod celebrate their 30th anniversary. Over the last three decades the “specialized” Canadian outfit has been through just about everything a band going this long can: many line-up changes, serious car crashes, and the death of the band’s musical figurehead.

In a fitting tribute to the band’s extraordinary career, this week they will release their thirteenth studio album, the superb Target Earth. Drummer and ever-present Voivod member Michel “˜Away’ Langevin stopped to talk with Geeks of Doom about the band’s fascinating career, the new album, touring, and dealing with Denis “˜Piggy’ D’Amour’s death, as well as working on a documentary on the band with filmmaker Sam Dunn (Iron Maiden: Flight 666, Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage).

Geeks of Doom: Target Earth: Are you happy with how the album sounds?

Michel “˜Away’ Langevin: Oh yeah, definitely, we worked very hard on it for the past two years or more. I’m also very happy with what Sanford Parker did in terms of mixing the album, it really brought the psychedelic metal side of us to the forefront. I’m very happy. Actually, finally, for the first time in many years circumstances were right and we were able to make it epic like we really wanted to do it.

Geeks of Doom: Yeah, it does have that epic feel, which is certainly different to the first Voivod album.

This Tuesday, Voivod‘s new album, Target Earth, will be released in North America on CD and MP3. But, from now until the release date, the full album is streaming online for free at Loudwire, courtesy of Century Media Records. Take a listen to the album here below.

Target Earth is the 13th studio album from the Canadian progressive thrash metal band and is the first with new guitarist Daniel Mongrain aka Chewy (replacing the late Denis D’Amour aka Piggy, who passed away in 2005) and marks the return of original bassist Jean-Yves Theriault (Blacky), who hasn’t been on a Voivod album since 1991’s Angel Rat.

With a metal “Geeks of Doom”, ex-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted is ready to talk. After 15 years with the world’s biggest metal band – and spells with Voivod, Ozzy Osbourne, Echobrain, and Flotsam and Jetsam – the extremely talented Newsted is clearly a member of rock royalty.

Back with a new band that he fronts, Newsted, and a new four-song EP entitled simply Metal, out on iTunes today, he is hungry to get back out there and play the music he loves and we need to hear.

“Kicking the ass” of a holiday bug, I caught up with Newsted on the eve of the release of Metal to discuss his new EP, getting back out on tour, and why James Hetfield is “untouchable.”

Geeks of Doom: Tomorrow is the day. Do you always feel the same way on the eve of an EP or an album release, or does this feel different, does this feel special?

Jason Newsted: It’s always exciting. I mean like the nervous excitement and that kind of thing. Putting yourself out there like that always kind of gives the nervous excitement. But it is different this time, it has been a long time since I had this feeling [laughs] and it’s magnified a bit because it’s my name, I wrote all the songs, all the parts myself, and created pretty much all [the music] and then put it together with my boys [guitarist Jessie Farsnworth and drummer Jesus Mendez Jr.]. So it is the first time I’ve done that. I mean, I wrote stuff in Flotsam [Flotsam & Jetsam] back in the day on bass and then we kind of made compositions out of it, but I constructed all these songs on guitar and I composed all the pieces.

I just saw that Canadian metal band Voivod is putting out a song book which will include guitar and bass tablature for their 1988 album Dimension Hatröss.

Since it’s a slow news holiday weekend and I know about 10 people who would want this, including me as well as the man I’m married to, I thought I’d mention it here and alert you that pre-order is available for this item right now. The tab book, which has transcriptions by current Voivod guitarist Dan “Chewy” Mongrain, will start shipping on May 1, 2012 and has a limited quantity of 100, so if you want it, jump on it now.