VOIVOD Drummer Discusses 'Target Earth' In New Interview

Pete Woods of Ave Noctum recently conducted an interview with drummer Michel "Away" Langevin of Canadian metal innovators VOIVOD. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On the 30th anniversary of VOIVOD:

Away: "Yes, we are from Northern Quebec — that's where we grew up, about 200 miles from Montreal — and on New Year's Eve there was a show celebrating the 175th anniversary of where we are from and they asked us to play one song, as there are many artists from Northern Quebec playing, so we took the opportunity to celebrate our 30th anniversary at midnight, so it was a great occasion. I remember that Snake [vocals] auditioned for the band, I believe it was the 7th or 8th of January '83, so this month is our 30th anniversary."

On the changes in music industry over that time:

Away: "Yes, and it goes with the same complex situation that comes with technology — you can apply it to CDs or MP3s. There are a couple of downfalls. We have to suffer the illegal downloads and all that. We were all tapetraders ourselves, but the Internet is such an incredibly quick way of promoting yourself. When we started, we had to record the 1984 demo, which was recently re-released by Alternative Tentacles, and we had to send the cassette to the address on the back of the vinyl that we had and wait for an answer for a week. We did another mailorder for the Iron Gang sampler we had set up, and it was all done by mail. It's a major, major change through the years and that's what I mean when I say we were kind of lucky to watch it go from the early '80s to now in terms of home recording, which really helped us in the case of finishing up 'Katorz' and 'Infini' for Jason [Newsted, former VOIVOD bassist], Snake and I. I think it would have been impossible to finish these two albums if Piggy [late VOIVOD guitarist] didn't record them on Pro Tools on a laptop at home."

On the development of the new VOIVOD album, "Target Earth":

Away: "Most of the arrangements are done by Blacky [bassist Jean-Yves Thériault] and Chewy [guitarist Dan Mongrain] and they both also have individual songs that mutated into VOIVOD material. We did a lot of improvisation sessions that we recorded and part of songs were poached from these, but again they were arranged by Chewy and Blacky. Eventually, I realized that the material was very intricate and I asked for a couple of trash metal songs with a MOTÖRHEAD beat and we ended up writing 'Kluskap O'Kom' and 'Corps Étranger', our very first French song."

On the "Target Earth" artwork:

Away: "Actually we had a discussion within the band and decided we wanted something that was more galactic and space looking. Then when we demoed the songs, I mentioned and noted that all the VOIVOD eras were presented musically, it made me feel that I could use colors from many front covers I did; that's why it's so colorful. I also wanted to do a series that would look good on vinyl. So I started working on that in Paint 2012 and the students and then everyone took to the streets here and there were at times 200 and 300,000 people passing in front of my house and there were mass riots with the anarchist groups right downtown from where I live. There were helicopters above my building all the time and it was the craziest summer, so slowly with the cover coming together, it was literally influenced by what was going on around my house. The three spheres were kind of like the three helicopters hovering around my house."

Read the entire interview at Ave Noctum.

"Target Earth" EPK: