Voïvod’s drummer Michel “Away” Langevin on the band’s 35th anniversary, touring, “The Wake” and other stories

Canadian progressive thrash and beyond-genre band Voïvod has just ended an impressive European tour through which they presented the fourteenth studio album, “The Wake”. The trip lasted about two months, enough time for these gifted musicians to go and show some sci-fi magic in almost each possible corner given that they performed in more than 20 countries. The latest record not only that sums up all the endeavours undertaken throughout Voïvod’s discography, but transcends boundaries and minds through openness, progressiveness and virtue in terms of music writing and execution. Thus the Voïvod discovered a new dimension just to return and tell us it’s time for the wake, although the mess remains hypnotizing in the human world. In September, when Voïvod stopped to perform in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, we spent a couple of moments with the musicians and the alien drummer Michel “Away” Langevin was extremely kind and answered a few questions for us. We dare to call him alien by reason of his unique drumming style, and if we look at his art and the balanced person he is, we get more reasons to imagine that he’s more than human, or at least a different human… Or being. Watch the video feature below and find about “The Wake” in Away’s perspective and listen to some live fragments from the opening track “Obsolete Beings” and a bit of “Into My Hypercube” from another mind-blowing record, “Nothingface” released almost 30 years. Since we remembered the numbers, our talk with Away was based on the band’s 35th anniversary and the beautiful memories emerging around the band’s first demo. We also talked about the Voïvod’s origin and other deeds such as the visual world of Away and the band Tau Cross.