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Voivod
April 28th 2002, Le Medley, Montreal

In 1982, somewhere in a basement in Jonquière,
four people, like you and I, fell in love with music
and decided to create their own. The Voivod caracter
never took a monster shape like Eddie (Maiden) or
Vic (Megadeth)... He's much more evil, much more clever.
He kept a low profile, sometimes even invisible. He found
his way under our skin, became harder to reach... and
nearly impossible to eliminate...

Interview with Michel "Away" Langevin (drums)

Sans Frais: When was the last time you played?
Away: With Snake, at least 8 years!

SF: Who writes what in the band?
A: It's Piggy who writes most of the music. I'm more
involved with the design, the artwork, and conceptual
ideas, but Snake writes the lyrics.

SF: So you made all the album covers?
A: Yup.

SF: So it's still your concept then...
A: Not always. There are songs that deal with the
Voivod caracter, so by then I bring forth the idea and I
try to make it fit in the actual context. And I realize, as
years go by, that the actual context is still the same! There
are problems that've been around forever, like the nuclear
era, we're still confronted to that. When i was a teen i
used to listen to bands like Crass, Dead Kennedys... bands
who'd yell about those things. Twenty years later, nothing
changed! There's always stuff to complain about and
we're takin' advantage of that in Voivod.

SF: That Voivod caracter... what is it?
A: Eh Boy! That's been such a long time! Actually it's a
caracter i created by drawings when i was 12. It's a kind
of nuclear vampire.. I took the Voivod name from
Bram Stoker's Dracula and i brought it to modern contexts
like nuclear powerplants and wars. Along the albums the
Voivod evolved, there are several mutations. He's a
warrior at first, then he adapts and he becomes an entity
that's not material. It's a pursuit of perfection. Kinda like
a Sci-Fi faerie tale. We made seven chapters, there's one
left to go that's not been recorded yet, but it's written. We
made the first five chapters in the 80's, the first five albums.
After that we made other records that didnt relate to the
Voivod at all, just other current problems. We're very
interested in new weapons. There's research to create
weapons that will roast your brain from a distance...We're
talkin' about that in our songs. That pretty much flies a
hundred feet above the common metal but...

SF: But you guys were never 100% in the norm, it's always
been fairly experimental.
A: Yah, yah. There's always been bands like Killing Joke
and King Crimson as an influence for us. But Motorhead,
that's the band that did it most. We're playin' with em for
the first time... I cant believe it! That band changed all our
lives. When i was 16, i hitchhiked from Jonquière to Montreal
to see them. When i came back, i was never the same again,
i bought a set of drums.

SF: They made you wanna play music?
A: In 1981-82, i was going at the university, in nuclear science.
I worked with lasers that were hooked to satellites. At the
time, that was Reagan's Star Wars project. Those who
graduate from nuclear science end up working on new
weapons. So basically I had the choice either to make em
or to bitch about em... Seeing the No Sleep Til Hammersmith
show that Motorhead did in '82 pretty much lit the spark.
We put the band together at that time. I had been playin' with
Piggy two or three years prior to that (1979 in highschool).
It's a dream for me to be here tonight.

SF: Were there places that you'd never imagine playing?
A: Eastern Europe and Alaska, which felt the most different.

SF: In the early days you were on Noise Records, so you
must've been playin' Germany... How the reaction over there?
A: Germany was the first place that caught on to us, there
and Chicago. When we went there, I gotta mention that it was
at the time thrash was huge, in '85. So that's pretty easy, there
were riots every night. We toured with Kreator and Possessed
and every time it was total hell. Kids smashing everything,
the cops show up all the time. I used to see moshpits with
three thousand people.. I dont get to see those much anymore.
That was the big thrash trip in the 80's. That was it, that huge
circle, that huge pit.

SF: What are you the most proud of having produced with
Voivod?
A: Well.... The twelve albums that we made, the countless
world tours, be a part of rock's history. Every time that i buy
a rock encyclopedia and i see the word Voivod with a bio, I
always think that it's pretty cool. We sold over a million albums
combined, that felt great when it happened. Those are
accomplishments, we set some goals, we dont always get to
them, but at the end of the day, we still have our integrity.
We make the music we wanted to make all along. A carreer
that spans over 20 years, that's damn rare. It wasnt easy either,
there's been battles but that's more stuff to whine about in
the songs!

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So there. I did it. Miss Castor made me do it at gunpoint!
I SWEAR!! SOMEBODY STOP HER!!!
Nah. I'm just too nice, tis all.

Away is such a cool guy. Kindness is written all over that man's face. Very approachable -as is the whole band. I'm still waiting on my backstage pix from my journey up to Hamilton. I'll post 'em when I get 'em. It was also way cool that he mentioned my hometown Chicago in the interview. This town raged in thrash's heyday!!