I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: April 5, 2019] Voivod

I’ve been a fan of Voivod for decades.  But I never saw them live when I was most into them (late 80’s).  Then after Denis “Piggy” D’Amour’s death in 2005 I assumed I never would.

But amazingly they found a guy who plays guitar very much like Piggy did–a bizarre hybrid of prog, metal, dissonance and eerie harmony.  That man is Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain.  Chewy is able to play Piggy’s parts.  And his new parts are very much in the style of old Voivod, but are certainly his own (his soloing style is definitely different for instance.  And since recording songs with him in 2013, Voivod have been touring fairly regularly.  (They played Philly in 2015 and 2016–to see them at the Black Box in Underground Arts would have been amazing!)

For a band that’s been active (in one form or another) for over 30 years, they still had a lot of fun on stage.  If there’s one thing I love it’s seeing a band enjoying themselves.

Strangely, in the 30 years that they’ve been together, nearly everyone has been replaced (with some returns), and there have been a number of styles.

The bass part was the most troubles, with the band going through several bassists over the years.  Original bassist Jean-Yves “Blacky” Thériault was back for a time in the 2010s but he left and was replaced by Dominique “Rocky” Laroche.

Through all incarnations of Voivod the one constant has been drummer Michel “Away” Langevin.  It was pretty awesome to see such a legend–even if he was hard to get a clear picture of.

But this all would have been moot if Denis “Snake” Bélanger weren’t singing.  He left for a short time in the mid 2000s, but now he’s back.  In the early days of Voivod, when I was in high school, I had no idea why Snake sang so weirdly–why did he emphasize things incorrectly?  Many years later I realized that he (and the rest of the band) is French Canadian, so he’s singing English with a very heavy French accent and pronunciation.

I already had tickets for a different show that night, but when I saw Voivod, I changed my plans.  Frankly, I was shocked to see that Voivod was not the headlining act.  I had never heard of YOB before this show (but apparently they are pretty popular).

It was a co-headlining show, but that still meant that Voivod would only get an hour or so.  I’m not sure how long a headlining show for them would be, but I wanted to hear as much as I could.

In fact, their new album is so good, they could have played all of it and THEN played the old songs too.  The night’s setlist combined the songs from the new line up (four of 11) and then basically a single song from each of the albums with the classic line up.

I was really close to “Chewy” (which was what I wanted).  As a result I was probably a little too close to hear the band very clearly. In fact, I couldn’t really hear Rocky’s bass all that much, which is a shame since the Voivod bass sound is second to none.  But I got to see up close the weird Piggy chords.  And the music never suffered–because most of these songs are about that guitar.

Occasionally Rocky and Chewy switched places (skipping across the stage), but I never really got a very good picture of Rocky.

The band was all about interaction.  Chewy and Snake freely gave out fist bumps and hand shakes (I got a fist bump at the end).  Chewy was also a ton of fun, hamming it up whenever he saw someone taking a picture or video.  They were a marked departure from Amenra and frankly most metal bands.

I couldn’t believe that Chewy could play this complicated stuff and still smile and goof around.  The new songs sounded just right.  “Obsolete Beings” was wonderful to watch. And the older songs sounded like Voivod is supposed to, with some new flourishes tacked on.  I don’t know if Piggy slavishly played like the album when they played live so I don’t know how different Chewy’s playing was, but it was amazing to hear these songs played the way they were supposed to be.

Snake joked with us a lot.  He said, “I hear that there is a statue in this town dedicated to our bassist.”  He also announced at one point that he would be playing bass and guitar at the same time.

Nothingface is my favorite Voivod album.  I’ve listened to it hundreds of times.  If they had played the whole album (it is the 30th anniversary after all) I would have been happy to hear the whole thing.  I was lucky enough to get “Into My Hypercube” and I was so psyched that it sounded so good–and I could really hear the bass on this one

I was actually assuming/hoping they’d play “Astronomy Domine” (which coincidentally would have been the third band I’d hear play it in a month (see The Claypool Lennon Delirium and Nick Mason later this month).  That seems to be an encore song though.  if they had headlined….

But all of the old thrashers sounded great too.

I was very excited that the ended the show with a song they really couldn’t NOT play (and certainly no one else is playing it).  That is the band’s own theme song “Voivod.”  Who even knows what the words are and it doesn’t really matter because we can all sing VOIVOD! at the top of our lungs along with a room full of Voivod fans.

The show could have been two hours longer and they might have been able to play everything i wanted to hear, but these 11 songs would have to do for now.

SETLIST

1. Post Society ¶
2. Ravenous Medicine ¥
3. Obsolete Beings ϖ
4. Psychic Vacuum ⊗
5. Into My Hypercube Ö
6. Iconspiracy ϖ
7. The Prow ®
8. Overreaction ¥
9. Fall ¶
10. The Lost Machine ⇔
11. Voivod ∇

∇ War and Pain (1984)
¥ Killing Technology (1987)
⊗ Dimension Hatross (1988)
Ö Nothingface (1989)
® Angel Rat (1991)
⇔ The Outer Limits (1993)
¶ Post-Society (2016)
ϖ The Wake (2018)