Interview: Michel “Away” Langevin of Voivod

Prog-thrash legends Voivod have been busy this year and just released their new live album Lost Machine-Live. We had the opportunity to speak with drummer Michel “Away” Langevin about the new release, how lockdown has affected the band and what they’ve been working on throughout 2020 as well as his own projects outside of Voivod.

How are things in Montréal?

We’re still in lockdown right now but things are looking brighter. Cases are going down… fingers-crossed.

Voivod has just released their new live album Lost Machine – Live. You’ve also put out three singles/videos for “The Lost Machine”, “Iconspiracy” and “Overreaction” from the album. How have both the fan and critical reception to everything been so far?

It was posted just hours ago and so far it’s been really good. It’s just great that we have something to offer right now.

The striking thing about the new videos is the use of your artwork for Voivod mixed with the editing style that’s reminiscent of your 80’s videos. Can you talk about how you come up with the concepts for your videos?

We knew we were going to release three singles. Since they are live singles, the director Felipe Belalcazar (who is also making a documentary about Voivod) asked me if I wanted to include some of my art. I thought it was a great idea and like you said, it immediately refers back to the early videos. So I thought I would supply some of my drawings that I do on the road. When we tour I draw my impression of each city after the show in my style. I supplied him with a lot of art like that, enough for the three videos, and I’m really pleased with the way they’ve been treated. It’s a mixture of psychedelia and heavy metal.

It’s really cool. It’s like a modern version of what you did for “Ravenous Medicine”.

Yeah! I think it’s fun because lately the people we have had do our videos, like “The End of Dormancy” or the three live videos, are really big fans of the Voivod aesthetic from the beginning. They know how to keep the spirit of the videos in a modern context.

Let’s talk a little about the COVID-19 situation. You said things are improving in Montréal. How have the restrictions related to the pandemic affected Voivod’s ability to work on projects together?

It hasn’t stopped us but we were lucky in the sense that after coming back from the European tour with GWAR last Winter, we took a break for the holidays, but early this year in January and February we started doing templates for a future studio album. In mid-March the lockdown started and we kept building on the templates with social distancing using Logic Pro and Dropbox – so digital files basically.

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We are demoing the album right now electronically. We are able to move onward with the documentary as well as a book about Voivod that is in the work. We are trying to wrap projects that were put aside because we toured so much for The Wake, so we just kept going and now we have released this new live album which is great. We can now move onto the studio material. Right now you can’t really go downtown here in Montréal to rehearse in the studio. Snake is building a studio in his house so we can really get together and jam eventually.

So you’re basically doing everything you can to keep the Voivod material going.

Yeah. We promised Century Media we would deliver new material some time next year. It’s also very exciting to write new material after the success of The Wake . The way we are working now I have to program the drums and it’s giving a new twist to the writing. I can really focus on Chewy’s riffs and program the beats hoping I can play them eventually. A lot of it is based on improvisations we did at the rehearsal space earlier this year so I know I can play the beats. It will probably end up making the next album a bit different to The Wake . Once we get together in one room, maybe all with our masks on, we’ll see how it morphs into Voivod material with Rocky and Chewy’s surgical metal style, and with Snake and I’s punk style….it all ends up being Voivod somehow.

So ultimately the final product comes together when you guys can meet up and rehearse.

Exactly! Right now we are building templates which are very useful and I must say, working this way makes for very good demos right now. A lot of it will be usable as scratch tracks once we have to really record it. All the tempos, click tracks, acceleration and deceleration has already been programmed so it’s a lot of work that we won’t have to do in the studio that’s been done right now. It’s great.

You have the advantage of having the foundations for the new record already so it can be put together quite quickly in the future.

Exactly! That’s why if things go back to normal we’re definitely going to be more organised and structured.

Earlier this year you released The End of Dormancy  EP where you added the brass section to the song. Looking at that and your preparations for the next record, what other kinds of instrumentation and sounds besides guitar, drums and bass would Voivod consider working with in your future experiments with your sound?

When we did The Wake , Chewy invited a string quartet and I thought the result was amazing. When we were invited to play at the Montréal Jazz festival, we wanted to do something special because it was prestigious so Chewy invited a brass quintet and I knew it was going to be amazing.

It’s a lot of work for Chewy because he writes the scores for each musician involved but the result is always amazing. When we played “The End of Dormancy” live at the jazz fest (the live version on the EP) it reminded me of a band I really love – Magma. The reaction of the crowd was amazing, so we knew that it would make sense to invite the quintet back to the studio to overdub on top of the studio version of “The End of Dormancy” for the video release – we wanted the soundtrack to be like the soundtrack to a sci-fi movie. Back in mid-March we had to focus on what we had to work on, and the EP was the first thing. We’re slowly wrapping stuff that was put aside so today it’s quite an achievement to finally release Lost Machine – Live . Everything is a lot of work but we can move on to the next project.

In August Voivod did their first ever livestream for Snake’s birthday. How well did it go down with the fans and would consider doing other online live events?

Oh yeah! This year we had a world tour planned that’s been postponed to who knows when, so we gave it a shot to celebrate Snake’s birthday online and it went really well. It was a technical challenge but everything went smoothly. Right now we are trying to figure out a way of doing more than that this Winter, maybe early next year, maybe playing specific albums…so we are focusing on that. It’s another case where we had to follow strict sanitary protocols during filming – wearing masks, two metres apart…just to get together and play together was amazing. Over the years people have asked us to play full albums like Nothingface or Dimension Hatröss so it might be a good opportunity to do that.

There’s lots of different ideas you can try with the online format.

Yeah. We can maybe even look at incorporating my art where I’ll find a technical way to do that so we’ll see.

With the lockdown the Voivod guys have obviously been in isolation. Has this given you the opportunity to work on other projects outside of the band.

Yes. I had the idea of making my art more available for publication so this Summer I spent a lot of time scanning mainly my road art because it’s the next book I want to release. I want to build a webstore and I also did a comic book that I got printed and I’ve got the boxes here, so I’m putting together the finishing touches to an online store and I’m gonna start releasing publications with my art. We were sort of told we should reinvent ourselves during the pandemic so I thought it was a good opportunity for me to start a publishing company. I’m working full-on with it!

I also did some recordings last year with people from the avant-garde scene like thisquietarmy so we are releasing that material as well. We mixed it and mastered it but I think the difficulty is to have the vinyl manufacturing ready on time. These days you have to wait five or six months as opposed to two or three before the pandemic. On my end, I spend a lot of time in my office scanning, which is great!

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When you get round to sharing your comics and your art book, where can the fans look out for them?

I will set up an Instagram and a Facebook page for my publishing company and I will definitely post it on all of the Voivod outlets. I will try to make sure people know about it! The whole platform for everything is ready, it’s just a matter of fine tuning last details like the postage fees. I was super busy with the release of Lost Machine-Live and now that it’s done I can spend the next few days finishing the Away website.

I found out that you’re very inspired by the Heavy Metal magazine from the 80’s…

Yeah! I actually discovered that magazine when it was called Métal Hurlant in the 70’s when I was around 13 or something. It’s been my life-changing discovery and it’s also the reason why I created the character Voivod and his world, Morgoth. In the 70’s I wanted to be an artist for Heavy Metal magazine some day – it was my dream. All my favourite artists Bilal, Moebius, Philippe Druillet (who is my ultimate favourite), they all come from that magazine and my style totally comes from that. In the 70’s my style was more sci-fi-oriented, before that it was a little Dungeons and Dragons-oriented, but eventually in the early 80’s it turned into more of a Cold War visual. There were also more dystopian influences with the early cyberpunk movies like Mad Max and Blade Runner, as well as a couple of TV movies that scared me like The Day After. These movies had a strong impact on me visually.

Would Voivod ever consider doing a short animated movie, like the Heavy Metal films, using your artwork and the band’s music?

That would be really amazing! The difficulty is always the same. There’s a lot of money involved production-wise. If you look at the history of Voivod – even though we’re enjoying a lot of success, it’s still on some kind of underground level so it’s hard for people to get the money to do these projects. We’ve been asked many times if we would ever do it and it would be a dream come true. The closest we got to such a thing was when the movie Heavy Metal 2000 came out and the first song of the movie is a Voivod song. I was really proud of that.

Last year Voivod won the Juno in the Best Heavy Metal/Hard Music category for The Wake. How did it feel to gain that kind of high-level recognition in the music industry?

We really didn’t take it for granted, it was an amazing moment. I was not expecting it to be so exciting and when they announced Voivod, it was like it was in slow motion for all of us. We looked up and all gave each other high-fives. We were so excited and everyone was happy for us. After 37 years on the road we won something! We had one very important award in London from Prog Magazine, the Visionary award, four years ago but it’s rare. We’ve been nominated a couple of times. The Wake was so well-received and it’s very encouraging because we went back into this very intricate fusion-metal style and the fact that it’s been accepted by the fans, the journalists and the industry…we’re enjoying a great momentum right now. The four of us have great chemistry and the lineup is on fire so it’s all great news.

When the lockdown restrictions are relaxed, how soon do you plan on getting back on the road?

We had some shows in Québec City that kept being postponed and they are now re-scheduled for February. That would be the start of things. We had a European tour in May of this year that was postponed until May of next year, but it’s been postponed again. Everything’s in limbo. Technically we’ll start here in Québec at the end of February but I’m not exactly sure if the authorities will allow more than 250 people. We will be playing quite a big theatre and the show will be split into two shows with half the crowd each night so there’s social distancing. It’s a new way of doing things that we’re going along with. We’ll see what happens but we can’t wait!

We actually say yes to everything and wait for it to get confirmed and we just keep going working on Voivod to make sure we have something to offer for the fans. They are very loyal to Voivod, we call them the Iron Gang, and we always feel like they deserve a new album or a new tour. It’s something we work on all the time.

Final question: what three things have you needed to survive during lockdown?

I needed to listen to a lot of music because I spend a lot of time in the office. The good thing is the main library in Montréal is open and you can reserve their material online and pick it up when it’s ready. I’ve been borrowing books, CDs and DVDs. I also needed BIXI, which is a bicycle you can rent with a magnetic key from stations, because drumming is supposed to be my exercise that takes my anxiety away, so I really need that type of exercise. Unfortunately, the season has ended so I’m looking into borrowing what they call Fat Bikes, winter bikes that you can rent in my neighbourhood. I really needed some kind of exercise or sports. I have ice-skates so I will also be skating. Number three would be writing the new album, it really keeps me going spiritually. It’s exciting to share the files with Snake, Chewy and Rocky, and build and fine-tune everything. I don’t have the feeling that we’re stalled which is important. I had to invest in new equipment but it was really worth it.

Lost Machine – Live is available now via Century Media

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