VOIVOD drummer Michel "Away" Langevin has given one of the more honest and sobering assessments of life on the road in 2026, describing the financial strain of touring in terms that many smaller and mid-level bands will recognize immediately.
Speaking in a recent podcast interview, Away did not hold back: "Man, it's really hard to justify going on the road sometimes. Post-pandemic — as soon as we started to tour again, everything had gone up." Hotels, tour buses, crew wages, equipment rental, fuel — every cost that goes into putting a band on the road has increased substantially since the COVID-19 shutdown years. The current geopolitical situation affecting global energy prices has made budgeting even more uncertain.
Away's comments come with the context of a band that has been making it work for decades. VOIVOD formed in Jonquière, Québec in 1982 and have never been a commercially dominant force, but they have built one of the most intensely devoted fanbases in metal through four decades of uncompromising, intellectually demanding music. That loyalty has a direct economic consequence: Away noted that during recent U.S. tour dates, merchandise sales were so strong the band had to reorder stock after their first show. The fans are showing up and putting their money where their mouths are.
The timing of Away's remarks is interesting. VOIVOD released Symphonique on June 5, 2026 — a stunning live collaboration with the Orchestre symphonique de Québec featuring twelve songs recorded in June 2025 across a 73-minute runtime. The record demonstrates everything that makes VOIVOD extraordinary: their music translates to orchestral arrangement because it already has the complexity and compositional ambition of classical music, expressed through extreme metal.
Yet even a band capable of symphonic collaboration must still load gear into a van, book hotels, and calculate whether the merch table will cover the gas. Away's honesty about that reality is valuable — and unusual. Too many artists talk about touring as a labor of love without acknowledging that love requires resources.
VOIVOD continue touring in support of their 2023 album Morgöth Tales, celebrating 40+ years of a career that has never been anything less than their own.