VOIVOD TRIVIA
Trivia
The Voivod, which is also the band's name, is conceived as a post-apocalyptic vampire lord. The member section of the official site says the mythology around it is drummer Michel "Away" Langevin's, that the band originally coalesced around that idea, and that most of the science-fiction subject matter that followed is his as well. Langevin is the one member who has never left since the band formed in 1982, and the figure gives the opening song of the debut album War and Pain its title.
Dimension Hatross, from 1988, is a concept album following Korgull, the mechanised figure that serves as the band's own emblem. Of the title, the band's official site explains that Hatross is how singer Snake — Denis Belanger — pronounces the French word atroce, meaning terrible or horrible. Drummer Michel Langevin conceived and drew the sleeve, and the album sold more than seventy thousand copies worldwide. In 2017 the American magazine Rolling Stone placed it at number 78 in its Top 100 Metal Albums of All Time. The cover of the Batman Theme is on the CD alone and is not on the original vinyl or cassette pressings.
The first CD pressing of The Outer Limits, from 1993, came with a miniature pair of 3D glasses for looking at the booklet artwork. The words "Number 8", set small in the top right of the sleeve, mean that counting the compilation The Best of Voivod this was the band's eighth release. The seventh song, "Jack Luminous", runs seventeen minutes and twenty-six seconds and is the longest thing they have recorded, and the fourth is a cover of Pink Floyd's "The Nile Song". It was the last album with singer Snake until he returned in 2002.
The title of Katorz, from 2006, comes from something guitarist Denis "Piggy" D'Amour wrote by hand. D'Amour recorded guitar and bass onto his own Mac at Jason Newsted's house in California and sent the band Pro Tools discs of the demos; the word he wrote on them was "Katorz", a phonetic spelling of quatorze, French for fourteen. He died of colon cancer in August 2005, and the album was finished by Langevin and Belanger adding drums and vocals over what he had left. The ninth song, "The X-Stream", was included in the video game Guitar Hero II.
Denis "Piggy" D'Amour, who played guitar for twenty-three years from the band's formation, was born on 24 September 1959 and died on 26 August 2005, according to the memorial page on the official site. A memorial was held in Montreal on 22 October that year, with his gear, rebuilt custom guitars, photographs and footage on display and music chosen from his own record collection playing through the evening. On that page the band's manager, James MacLean, describes Piggy as someone who lived for his music: easy-going but focused, never complaining, unwilling to be a burden on anyone, and wanting only to write music and play his guitar.
Daniel "Chewy" Mongrain, who plays guitar in place of Piggy, joined in 2008. The member section of the official site says he plays guitar and backing vocals and writes as a member of the band, and that he is also a co-founder of the Quebec technical metal band Martyr. Bassist Dominic "Rocky" Laroche has been there since 2014, and singer Denis "Snake" Belanger from 1982 to 1994 and again from 2002.
Of the 1984 debut War and Pain, the band's official site cites a 1986 television interview in which they said it had passed forty thousand copies two years after release. The video from the album was made not for the title track but for the opening song, "Voivod", directed by Dede Fortin. It has been reissued on CD many times since: on Enigma in 1990, in Roadrunner's Pricekillers series the same year, remastered by Metal Blade in 1994, and again by Metal Blade in 2004 as a remastered three-disc box.
Behind the self-titled album of 2003 the band played the second stage of Ozzfest that year, where bassist Jason Newsted played for both Voivod and the headliner, Ozzy Osbourne. Television carried them widely in this period: the video for "We Carry On" was in heavy rotation on MTV2's Headbangers Ball and on Fuse TV's Uranium, and the band appeared on the latter, where Newsted talked through how he had come from Metallica to Voivod — a band he had been listening to long before he joined it.
In May 2025 the band received an honorary doctorate from the Universite du Quebec a Chicoutimi. The news section of their official site reports it on 5 May and calls it the highest distinction the university awards. UQAC is in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, the region the band come from. A further item dated 30 September that year announces a book covering more than forty years of their work, Always Moving - The Strange Multiverse of Voivod.
The live album Symphonique, from June 2026, is the first record the band made with a symphony orchestra. It was taped on 4 June 2025 at the Grand Theatre de Quebec in Quebec City with the Orchestre symphonique de Quebec, conducted by Dina Gilbert. The official site calls it a long-held ambition finally realised, and what it holds runs about seventy-three minutes. Century Media released it worldwide on 5 June 2026 on several formats.