VOIVOD | LIVE REVIEW
The Globe, Cardiff, Wed 3 Oct
A full 35 years in the game, and Voivod still come onstage beaming. Beyond explaining it away on a rider of full access to the bar’s optics or the giddying rush that comes from visiting Roath, the band have every reason to feel pleased with themselves. Their latest album The Wake is a straight-up home run, twisted in the themes of Voivod’s own apocalyptic lore but with a new, aggressively jarring, restless style that blows the cobwebs off the metal machine left tired by other bands still hanging around today.
Experimental for the sake of heaviness, the new album is as musically relevant as anything out today, but Wednesday’s gig still could have been a snoozer; it was my first time seeing Voivod, and so when just before go-time the place was only half capacity I started getting nervous for the band. Onlookers, a lot of whom seemed to have seen the band seven-odd times each, just smiled wryly.
Beloved by their fans, Voivod are my idea of a stage presence. Vocalist Denis ‘Snake’ Bélanger handles the crowd with a mischievous, boyish charm, more reminiscent of fellow Canadian Norm MacDonald than the frontman of an important metal band. Far removed from caring whether the room held 50 or 5,000 people, the band played thrash tighter than a big band plays Glenn Miller. If anything, the intimate nature of the gig suited the band more, the Globe floor becoming like the garage where your older brother and his band practice and drink – if your brother’s mates were anything as good as Voivod. In a guitar-dominated genre, a gig where the drummer gets the loudest cheer of all is a real indicator of something else, and drummer Michael ‘Away’ Langevin definitely is that- and a sight to behold in his thousand-yard stare and mop top.
Thirty-five years on and the only thing disappointing about the gig was how few people turned up: with Slayer/Anthrax at the Motorpoint in a few weeks, it would have been nice for Welsh headbangers to throw out a neck muscle together at something special.
words JASON MACHLAB