SonicBlast in Conversation with Voivod
“Legends” isn’t even the right word for VOIVOD, it doesn’t seem enough to describe everything they mean to the heavy music scene in general. Very few bands reach the 45 year old mark like these Canadians are about to, and it’s hard to come up with any other band who has reached it while still being artistically relevant and prolific throughout pretty much their entire career. Even now, when they are about to visit Sonic Blast for the first time, they have their hands absolutely full – a new symphonic live album, a video game, a documentary, a book, tours and special shows, the world of Voivod keeps spinning at great speed and we are happy to just keep up. We managed to catch founding member, drummer and visual artist extraordinaire Michel “Away” Langevin, in the middle of all these activities, and sat down with him for a lovely conversation about everything that’s going on with the band, and the expectations they have for their visit to the festival in a couple of months.
So, you’re just about to release a very unusual live album, ‘Symphonique’, you’re getting ready to play a few shows in the summer… what’s the vibe within the band right now?
Michel: Oh, we’re pretty busy. We just came from a US tour and we are also writing a new studio album and recording it. We’re doing sessions of three songs and that’s the only way we can make it happen between tours. We are also preparing the tour in June, July and August in Europe, during which we will visit Sonic Blast. We refreshed the setlist a lot for it, so there needs to be some preparation. The symphonic album is coming out when we start the tour too, so we’re doing a lot of interviews with that release in mind. It’s all pretty exciting. We’re also going to do the symphonic show again early next year, in our hometown, where we formed Voivod in 1983 with the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean Symphony Orchestra. It’s all good stuff happening. Oh, we have a video game in the works too! And the Voivod documentary will come out pretty soon as well, and we just had a book by Jeff Wagner that came out, called ‘Always Moving: The Strange Multiverse of Voivod’. We have a lot of stuff going on!
A video game, you say? That is exciting, what can you tell us about that?
Michel: It’s being made by Nicola Piovesan from Chaosmonger Studio, who did a video for ‘Target Earth’ a long time ago. He’s doing a video game based on the older, end of the ‘80s / early ‘90s style of video games. It’ll be called ‘The Nuclear Warrior’, and the music of Voivod is featured but turned into 16-bit music. We are pretty involved, I collaborated a lot with the graphics, and Chewy is doing a lot with the music. Snake will do the voice of the main character and Rocky is testing the game right now, so the whole band is in on it and it’s pretty cool.
I love that you said that ‘Target Earth’ was a long time ago, because perhaps to the older fans it still feels like one of the newer albums.
Michel: Oh, of course! It feels like a long time ago, but it was still made 30 years after we formed [laughs]. But we’ve been so productive over the years, so we’ve done a lot since then and it feels like it was longer ago for us.
Even with the several difficulties you have faced, Voivod has just kept rolling along, hasn’t it?
Michel: It has, but we could have been even more productive if it wasn’t for the many obstacles. But still, by now I’ve lost count, but we probably have more than 25 albums, with the Best Ofs and the live albums and all the box sets. So there’s a lot of material to pick from, for newer listeners.
It’s been 45 years since the band started, a lot of your fans actually don’t know a world without Voivod. That’s incredible.
Michel: [laughs] I feel that I don’t either! I totally dedicated my life to this project, and it’s been quite a rollercoaster ride, for me and everyone else, especially Snake too. Now we’re enjoying a very good moment, we are more popular than ever, so we’re just riding the wave and enjoying it. But we still work a lot. Like I said earlier, we’re always busy, either touring or writing or recording, which is great.
It’s hard to think of another band with this longevity and your characteristics – you’re still very much a DIY band these days, so to reach this point, that’s quite rare.
Michel: Yeah, I think so, but I still have my heroes, people like Anvil, and I just saw Raven recently too. They tour a lot and they’re older than I am! So it’s pretty inspiring. They really kick ass still, and they’re a pretty good example of perseverance, that your efforts eventually pay off in the end. I think when you work hard, all these decades, eventually you gain a sort of legendary status, you start to get people of different generations coming to see your shows, and that’s the most rewarding thing of all.
I suppose that a Voivod live show is very different these days from what it was like in the beginning, particularly considering that aspect, parents bringing their kids and things of that nature.
Michel: Yeah, it’s pretty fun to see the kids who have the t-shirts that are still too big for them , they want to have the Voivod shirts on, but even the smaller ones are too big! [laughs] But they know all the lyrics from all the eras of Voivod already usually, it’s pretty impressive. Sometimes we get them on stage, and they will stagedive into the arms of their parents, and that’s really cool. There is also this feeling that we get now, that there are many people at the shows who feel very lucky to still be able to see Voivod, because we’ve been around for a long time, and you never know when we’re going to come back. I know because I have the same feeling when I go see a band that I really love, like Van der Graaf Generator or Magma for instance. I always think it might be the last time I see them, and I feel very privileged to see those shows. So I feel that vibe sometimes in the crowd.
It’s almost like a celebration, isn’t it?
Michel: Yes. You get to that point. The people who are into Voivod, they really like to connect to each other. We call them the Voivodians, they have a whole community. Like at Wacken, for instance, they will have their own part of the camping where they all pitch their tents, and it’s Voivodland out there!
It’s great how at ease you guys are with the anniversaries and generally celebrating your past – a lot of bands don’t like that much. You have a couple of important ones coming up too, ‘Killing Technology’ is 40 years old next year, ‘Dimension Hatröss’ in two years…
Michel: I always see those occasions as an incentive to go into some new project, and it gives me something to look forward to. I have lots of ideas for doing something special for the 45th anniversary or for the 50th anniversary. Sometimes we’ll play an album, like we did during the pandemic. We did some online shows where we played a classic album all the way through, we did ‘Dimension Hatröss’, ‘Nothingface’… So it’s always a good occasion to do something special. I know that whenever we will celebrate the 45th anniversary of Voivod, we’ll definitely do something special up north in our hometown, like we do every five years or so. We already have the symphonic show coming, as I said before, and we’re working on having a statue of Piggy put up in our hometown where we played our very first show in 1983. There are so many new projects in the works right now and it’s all based on anniversaries, so I don’t see it as just looking at the past, and it doesn’t really bother me at all to focus on those occasions. It’s a good effect of our longevity! Hopefully we can still kick ass and for the next ten years at least.
Do you have a different approach to the shows when you play festivals? Is it more of a celebratory thing than your regular club shows?
Michel: We do, yeah, and also for practical reasons, because we usually have a shorter set at festivals, except when we headline, of course. So we usually pack the dates between festivals with club shows where we’ll play like 90 minutes or so. But if you’re playing a festival and you’re being told to play 45 or 60 minutes, it’s another story for sure. We pick the songs carefully according to the festival we will be playing at. If it’s a very heavy festival, for example, we’ll build the set accordingly, or if it’s a more experimental kind of event, then it’s another story. We take everything in consideration, and it’s pretty exciting to keep changing things. I also like to play on the drum kits that belong to the festival’s set up!
Really?
Michel: Yeah! Because when I play on another drum kit, it makes me play in a new way too. I really like playing on different drum kits all through the summer at all the different festivals. I love to really use the sound of the drum kit and all of them sound different, which makes me alter the way I play. Sometimes my style will be a bit jazzier, or more trash metal, depending on what I’m playing on. A couple of festivals we did, like for example Hell’s Heroes in the United States, they asked us to play ‘80s material and they had a kit that had like two kick drums and I don’t really do that anymore, so it totally made me play like back in the ‘80s for that show.
Do you normally have time to see other bands at festivals? If there’s anything that interests you, will you see a show if you can?
Michel: Oh yeah, definitely! I try to walk to different stages and check what’s going on, smaller stages, big stages. It makes me discover newer bands as well, because at home I’m not that connected with newer music. If I buy a new album, it will be like an album by one of my heroes, like the latest Judas Priest or something. So I usually discover music at festivals. I also go to the main library here in Montreal to borrow CDs that I don’t know about, so that’s how I try new music as well. I’m pretty old school regarding that.
There’ll be a cool mix of old and new bands at Sonic Blast actually, Turbonegro and High on Fire will be there, even Kylesa, very well-known bands, but then some of the newer bands like Chat Pile and people like that will also play.
Michel: I saw some things about the festival, I know that it’s in a really nice place close to the beach, but I actually didn’t know High on Fire were also playing, we’ve played together in the past and we had a blast. I’ll have to look up what bands are playing that we can catch, I usually plan my day accordingly after looking at the bill of the festival. Even Turbonegro, wow, I saw them a long time ago and the atmosphere in the club was crazy even before they came on stage. It was really cool. Everyone with the jackets of the Turbojugend and everything.
What are some memories that you might have of Portugal and the other times you’ve played here before?
Michel: I think the one with Opeth in Porto is the one I remember better, that was a really, really amazing show. I have great memories of playing in Barroselas too, in the big tent, that was a blast. But we’ve always had an awesome time in Portugal. I’m addicted to travelling and playing Voivod music in front of my friends, old and new, I like discovering and exploring new countries, new cities. I take a lot of photos of the architecture around the clubs.
You mentioned that you had refreshed the setlist a lot for this upcoming tour?
Michel: Yes! We sure did. We like changing things often so it’s not boring, for us or the audience. We just started rehearsing that setlist yesterday. There are a lot of songs on it that we haven’t played in a long, long time, some of them we haven’t played for decades. We haven’t added any of the new songs that we are writing for the next album, but rest assured that you will hear a lot of songs that we usually don’t play, it’s going to be a special show.
Is there an era of Voivod that is somehow more interesting for you to play live?
Michel: Well, I mean… [pause] We’ve had several different lineups and I truly love them all. I’m proud of every single album because most of them were done in difficult circumstances. But to give you something, I think that a song that I really like to play live is ‘The Prow’ from ‘Angel Rat’. It always goes over very well, but on the other hand we’ve played it so many times that right now it’s off the setlist.
That’s an album that grew a lot with time, isn’t it?
Michel: Oh yeah. Back then people in general didn’t really seem to like it but now everyone loves it so we can play a lot of songs from that album. But you know, to get back to what you asked before, I have to say I have great memories of the period with Jason Newsted, when he was also playing with Ozzy. We did the Ozzfest and we opened for Ozzy a lot, so he was playing two shows a night for the whole year of 2003. It was crazy. I also have very fond memories of ‘Nothingface’ because we did a tour with Rush and we also did a tour with Faith No More and Soundgarden. And I also love what’s going on right now with the symphony orchestra! It’s really exciting, although very stressful, because as a drummer, if I make a mistake, there are like 70 musicians who are lost. It’s not just the other three guys now? Responsibility grows a bit.
Out of curiosity, are you in touch with your old vocalist Eric Forrest? Did you stay friends?
Michel: Oh, yeah, yeah. He lives in Toulouse, in France, now. So whenever we are playing nearby, in Barcelona or Toulouse, he comes and even sings a song with us. He did that at Hellfest as well. Sometimes he’ll sing ‘Rise’ from the ‘Phobos’ album, sometimes it’s ‘Tribal Convictions’ or ‘Voivod’. It’s pretty fun to see him often. He showed us the new band he’s singing in, Master’s Ashes, it sounds amazing.
