Never ones to simply rest on their laurels, Montreal prog metal masters Voivod have never once stopped innovating over the course of their career, always offering up something interesting and creative with each new release. That said, it’s always nice to look back at the classics now and then, and that’s just what Voivod has been doing with a series of recent livestreams focusing on some of their earlier works, the latest of which saw the band revisiting their 1988 concept album Dimension Hatröss.
After a brief intro laying out the basic story of the album followed by a montage of each band member’s face in closeup, Voivod launched into their set, starting (obviously) with “Experiment”, the first track off the album. From there, the band locked into the pummeling groove of “Tribal Convictions”, one of the highlights of the entire set alongside later tracks “Technocratic Manipulators” and “Cosmic Drama”. The band’s performance was impressive throughout, though perhaps the most memorable moment came not from the performance itself, but from an intermission of sorts halfway through their set.
At the midpoint, we were treated to an interlude featuring the band unloading and unpacking a case belonging to former guitarist and founding member Denis “Piggy” D’Amour, who passed away in 2005. That case, stored at Jason Newsted’s studio and untouched since 2003, clearly brought back a lot of memories for the band, with vocalist Denis “Snake” Bélanger describing it as “like a time capsule.”
Amongst the items found within that case were two toy rayguns, fairly apropos considering the notable sci-fi bent of much of Voivod’s work. Amazingly enough, those toys guns still worked and they even made an appearance as part of this show, with Snake firing them off and incorporating the sound into the band’s set closing performance of Neal Hefti’s “Batman” theme. It was a nice moment that saw the band remembering and honouring a fallen comrade.
All in all, the band sounded quite impressive, both from a performance and a production perspective. While livestreams such as this can never really take the place of a live concert, this one did serve as a reminder not only of how good Dimension Hatröss was (and still is) but also of what a formidable live entity Voivod is.