Progressive RockMetal
Eric Forrest has sung with Voivod again, twenty-five years after leaving the band, and not for some symbolic appearance: he did the entire European tour. Denis «Snake» Bélanger had to stay home over a family matter, and it was Snake himself who suggested calling Forrest.
They gave him a week and a half’s notice, with the idea that it would be «maybe twenty shows or so», and the next day drummer Michel «Away» Langevin confirmed it was actually the whole schedule. «It was truly an honour, a privilege and a surprise,» the singer sums up: «one of the best tours I’ve ever done in my life, by far.»
Forrest held Snake’s spot between 1994 and 2001, leaving behind two studio albums, «Negatron» (1995) and «Phobos» (1997), plus the live record «Voivod Lives» and the compilation «Kronik». His stint ended with an accident: the band’s van crashed in Germany in 1998, and the singer came out of it badly hurt.
The band he found this time round wasn’t one he’d known from the inside: Away, the only member who’s always been there, guitarist Daniel «Chewy» Mongrain and bassist Dominic «Rocky» Laroche. Voivod formed in 1982 in Jonquière, Quebec, built around a post-nuclear science-fiction imagery, and released «Killing Technology» (1987), «Dimension Hatröss» (1988) and «Nothingface» (1989), the last of which included a cover of Pink Floyd’s «Astronomy Domine». They carried on after guitarist Denis «Piggy» D’Amour died in 2005, with Mongrain learning the repertoire from his recordings.
Meanwhile, Forrest is finishing «Voivod Revisited», a record from his own project E-Force featuring re-recordings of material from «Negatron» and «Phobos», new original songs and covers. It doesn’t have a release date yet.
Text by Guillem Cardós