Still getting out to explore venues new to me , it took one of my favorite bands to inspire me to not settle down for the evening on the couch. Having seen Voivod multiple times going all the way back to the 80s , they have a knack for picking hungry young bands on the rise whose performance forces the Canadian thrash veterans to bring their A game. I have seen Soundgarden open for them, Amenra open for them and now Imperial Triumphant. Funny enough it was when Voivod opened for Napalm Death that they offered up their best show This tour finds them celebrating 40 years as a band. The newer members more fused with Snake and Away by now.
A decent crowd for a Wednesday night, the venue holds 800, so maybe 400 people showed. Local bands death metallers Vacuous Depths opened the show, they play a dense slightly blackened style of death metal with their drummer being the star of the show. He played every accent with intensity but was very relaxed in doing so. Then Heaven's Gate a band with Tony from Iron Regan and Municipal Waste, with the drummer from Cannibal Corpse, they played the kind of cross over thrash you would expect from that kind of pairing and were popular with the crowd.
The venue seemed to have been designed for the aesthetics of Imperial Triumphant in a Lynchian art deco. It was like you were stepping into one of their music videos. I have reviewed a couple of their albums "Vile Luxury" and "Alphaville" , the latter and improvement over the former, but it scored an 8, well done not blowing my socks off and being listened to in heavy rotation. They are much more impressive live. It is oddly more their element despite having the benefit of being able to add more layers of sound in the studio. On stage the side of the band you see grooves and uses their energy to maximum effect. Obviously with the masks there is a theatrical element, but this is taking further in their interactions with the crowd. I am going to go back and give their 2022 album a listen after being so impressed by their performance. They are not a black metal band and perhaps that was the turn off given the spin my peers in music press tried to angle them as black metal band that was creating music that was safe for everyone to listen to and trying to cancel their Northern European counterparts for being hateful. Black metal is supposed to be hateful, these guys are progressive metal, perhaps death metal at times. What they do works for them but is not a replacement for death metal, nor is that the intent of their performance.
Voivod's surviving members are 58 year old singer Snake and 59 year old drummer Away. Away's drumming shows that the years have been kinder to him, as he plays a wide range of demanding dynamics ranging from the faster thrashing punk of their earlier "War & Pain" songs to the more recent prog outings. They even played one of the heavier 90's songs that served as the forerunner to what Meshuggah does today. While Away's playing was flawless, Snake's voice held up pretty well, he even pulled off the bulk of the thrash era screams on the song "Killing Technology" which they opened with. Their 13 song set could be said to lean heavily on their newest album "Synchro Anarchy" , but they only played three songs from it and then a song from almost every other album. Yes, even "Angel Rat" and "Phobos" which acknowledged the period without Snake.
When you have been around for 40 years it is ambitious to encompass the entirety of your career in one show, especially when you are a band like Voivod who sets out to write often conceptual albums rather than singles. They are not a greatest hits band, many songs were screamed out for by the fans, "Tribal Convictions" perhaps the most, but this was not an evening for taking requests, due to the winding nature of their arrangements, this tour was obviously very rehearsed with little room for improvisation. The set list has not varied much from show to show, sure Jason Newstead joined them for a song at one gig, but aside from that it's business as usual without feeling like they were punching a clock, as the enjoyment of their songs is retained after four decades.
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