Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Zagreb / Vintage Industrial Bar / Croatia
Concert date: October 3, 2017
Attendance: 170
Ticket price: 80.00 HRK (presale) / 95.00 HRK (day of show)
Barely a year had passed since the last visit from Canada’s cult veterans of experimental metal Voivod, famed for their artistically visionary, full-blooded wrestling with uncharted musical dimensions, and the rock-solid quartet, led by the brilliant musical visionary, artist and drummer Michel Langevin (Away), was already back on the stages of the old continent. Last year Voivod visited Ljubljana’s Orto bar; this year they stopped in Croatia. First in Pula, then a day later in the Croatian capital, Zagreb. RockLine has covered this band in Zagreb before, at the legendary club KSET, back in early May 2011. Ahhh, those lovely memories.
Despite career upheavals, ups and downs, and changes to key members of the lineup, Voivod are still a firmly saddled crew with a musical dossier all their own, one that keeps scooping up creative inspiration by the heaping spoonful, which Voivod have regularly turned into experimental adventurism over the past decade too. Few come close to Voivod at this. Actually, nobody does. The excellent current album »Target Earth« and the new EP »Post Society« released last year after it keep up the artistic pedigree earned through the eighties and nineties, with guitarist Daniel »Chewy« Mongrain justifying, with his exceptional quality for nearly a full decade now, the far-from-easy job of filling the giant shoes of the late and far from easily replaceable Piggy.
Before Voivod hit the stage, the intro to the new concert feast came from Berlin doom/sludge metallers Earth Ship, who released their fourth studio album »Hollowed« last year and now operate as a trio: Jan Oberg (guitar, vocals), Sabine Oberg (bass) and Florian Hauser (drums). It’s on that latest record, »Hollowed«, that you can hear the band’s artistic expansion, with a bunch of varied and dynamic songs packed onto it. Earth Ship built their set mostly around the current album. That let them rage and fire from every position without compromise, often pulling in Kylesa and Crowbar. Morbid melodies reigned, and a faint whiff of their idols Alice In Chains could be detected too. Monolithic doom volleys all the way, and a deeply committed, confident performance over a solid 45 minutes.
Voivod took the stage at eleven at night. They didn’t really “update” the set much compared to what they played a year ago in Ljubljana, but the EP »Post Society« got a much bigger showcase, with Voivod playing four of the five tracks on it this time.
Voivod remain an absolute one-of-a-kind, and their infectious stage charisma and likability remain the untarnished companions of their shows. The Zagreb gig confirmed it. We’d hoped the club would be packed to the rafters. Still, around 200 people showed up, and in the front row two incredibly fired-up fans from Slovenia went wild, having come straight from Babno Polje, which is a two-and-a-half-hour drive one way to Zagreb. Denis Belanger is an incredible frontman. Charismatic, a rough-edged teddy bear who deliberately uses his stage presence to evoke the feeling of a lovable giant, and who keeps the crowd close with his hilariously goofy grimaces. Guitarist Chewy kept developing even greater facial elasticity, and it becomes clear right away where he got that nickname. The band is incredibly agile and dynamic on stage. New bassist Dominique Laroche (Rocky), who joined the band in 2014, and Chewy communicate constantly, and several times during the show they completely swapped the left and right sides of the stage. Away raged across his (admittedly modest) drum kit, once again conjuring miracles from it and reminding everyone yet again just how exceptional he is. The band seemed positively infallible and brilliantly tight. With all the kinetics and adrenaline they unleashed, not for a single moment did they show a hint of stage imprecision or sloppiness. The set included quite a few musical delights from the cult eighties era. They leaned especially on material from the notorious album »Killing Technology« (1987), and played one song from each of the albums released between 1984 and 1991. The end of the show came definitely too soon, when the band tore into the inevitable Voivod. In the obligatory encore it wasn’t hard to guess what Voivod were about to play. Especially when Belanger revealed it was a cover of another band and that the song was dedicated to Lemmy. Voivod recently released a seven-inch vinyl single, »Space Machine«. It’s a cover of the original by cult space rockers Hawkwind, which Voivod dressed up in their own musical clothes. Their version is so ravenous that even in the encore Voivod managed to get the front rows into wild moshing.
Atonal chords, a series of “sci-fi shattered” rhythms providing the framework for the unpredictable development of the compositions, smashing transitional passages played in the least expected way, drums that seem to be playing rhythms “in reverse” and make you feel the guitar is actually holding the main rhythm, and more. So Voivod bring it all. They’re an experience that, with its energy and layered genre fusion, where you hear everything from thrash metal to punk, raw rock’n’roll devastation, even classical touches, delivers a whole bag of big concert fun and spectacle. That’s what matters. Both for the more demanding listeners who swear by musical wizardry in experimentation, and for everyone who simply came for a dose of concrete, in-your-face racket and roar! A cannon shell and a projectile flying straight, once again hitting the bullseye!
The birth of a post-apocalyptic society of robot zombies, riding on musical tricks that build a one-of-a-kind sonic universe from Canada’s experimental masters Voivod. Unforgettable!
Setlist
1. Intro
2. Killing Technology
3. Post Society
4. Chaosmöngers
5. The Unknown Knows
6. Overreaction
7. The Prow
8. Ravenous Medicine
9. Fall
10. Korgüll the Exterminator
11. The Lost Machine
12. We Are Connected
13. Voivod
—encore—
14. Silver Machine
Photo gallery
