AWAY: New VOIVOD Album To Arrive In 2016

On February 11, Josh Rundquist (a.k.a. That Drummer Guy) conducted an interview with drummer Michel “Away” Langevin of Canadian metal innovators VOIVOD before the band’s performance at Amsterdam Bar And Hall in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can now listen to the chat in the YouTube clip below.

Asked about VOIVOD‘s plans to record the follow-up to 2013’s “Target Earth” album, Away said: “We wanna release a bunch of seven-inch [singles] first. We have many split seven-inch [singles] coming up this year — the first one with AT THE GATES in April, and the new want to do another one with NAPALM [DEATH], and another one with CORRECTIONS HOUSE, and so on. But eventually we’ll write a whole bunch of songs and compile everything into an album, I would say, early next year. Right now we’re sort of touring on the new single that came out the first day of the [current] tour in Miami, ‘We Are Connected’. But this is coming out in April as a seven-inch with AT THE GATES.”

Asked if “We Are Connected” is a good representation of VOIVOD‘s direction for the next album, Away said: “Absolutely. It’s shameless prog rock, but it’s VOIVOD, and the thrash metal [influences are] there. It’s what we do naturally. We are working on two new songs in the back of the bus on the computer, and it’s definitely the same direction as ‘We Are Connected’.”

VOIVOD and NAPALM DEATH have joined forces for a North American tour, aptly dubbed “Through Space And Grind”.

VOIVOD last summer tapped Dominic “Rocky” Laroche to play bass for the band following the departure of Jean-Yves Thériault (a.k.a. Blacky).

Laroche, who previously performed with blues musician Steve Hill, made his live debut with VOIVOD on July 12, 2014 at Festival Jonquière En Musique in the group’s former hometown of Jonquière, Quebec, Canada.

VOIVOD on July 11, 2014 released a statement claiming that Blacky “decided to leave the band for his own personal reasons.”