Voivod’s Away says symphonic show was a demanding memory exercise

Voivod drummer and founding member Michel “Away” Langevin said the band’s first symphonic live album turned into a real memory test, the kind of show where every cue, dynamic shift and arrangement turn had to land inside his head before it ever reached the kit.

In a 49-minute Talk Louder conversation published May 25, 2026, Away broke down the demands of Symphonique, Voivod’s upcoming release due June 5, 2026 via Century Media Records. The album was recorded on June 4, 2025 at the Grand Théâtre de Québec in Québec City with the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec under conductor Dina Gilbert, and Voivod says the result is a 12-song live set running 73:24.

For drummers, that is the real story. A metal show lets you lean on muscle memory and volume. A symphonic date forces something else entirely. Away described the performance as “quite an exercise in memory,” and that tracks with the job in front of him: keeping Voivod’s sci-fi metal locked to a full orchestra while staying inside a much wider dynamic range than a club-stage set ever asks for. The first single, “Forgotten In Space (Symphonique),” with an orchestral arrangement by Hugo Begin, gives a clean example of how much structure had to be mapped out before the downbeat.

Symphonique is not being framed as a novelty pass-through. Voivod calls it its first live album with a symphonic orchestra, and the track list includes a new symphonic version of Pink Floyd’s “Astronomy Domine,” which tells you this was curated as a full-length statement, not a one-off stunt. The release also arrives as a late-career marker for a band that has been at it for more than 40 years, with Away still treating the project like a musician’s problem to solve rather than a branding exercise to sell.

Away called the album a “longtime dream turned reality,” and that is the right way to hear it. Voivod also said the concept is not finished, with plans to revisit it in 2027 with the Orchestre symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean in the region where the band formed in 1983, and with hopes of taking the show to local orchestras around the world one day. For a drummer built on precision and instinct, Symphonique sounds like the rare case where the memory work is the point.