Eric Forrest got a phone call ten days before the tour started, and ended up fronting VOIVOD across Europe for the first time in a quarter of a century.
The band's singer Denis "Snake" Bélanger sat the run out to attend to a family matter. Speaking to Sylvain Latour of The Subversive Podcast, Forrest described how the offer reached him. "[VOIVOD's] management, James MacLean, reached out, like, maybe a week and a half before the tour and said, 'We have to confirm a few things, but it's a possibility. Would you be interested in doing the tour?' ... And for maybe, like, 20 shows or something. I said, 'Yeah, sure, man. Of course, I'll do it. It'd be an honor and a privilege to do it.'" Drummer Michel "Away" Langevin called the next day to say they wanted him for all of it.
The idea, it turned out, came from the man he was covering for. "It was apparently Snake's idea. He said, 'Hey, maybe see if Eric can do it,' 'cause of his situation."
Forrest sang on two VOIVOD albums, 1995's "Negatron" and 1997's "Phobos", and those records got their due on the road. "People liked the 'Negatron', 'Phobos' stuff. Obviously, we played a couple of those, and some old classics." He was careful about his position in the band: "I'd just stay in my lane, do my job. And it was fantastic — one of the best tours I've ever done in my life, by far... I'm not in VOIVOD, but I'm still the little brother of VOIVOD in a way."
He did all of it while ill. In February 2026 Forrest, who lives in Toulouse, went public with a stage three prostate cancer diagnosis he received in 2024 after a PSA reading of 23. Asked whether the tour forced restrictions on him, he was matter-of-fact.
"I'm taking a metabolic route, as opposed to chemo and surgery for many reasons. But it hasn't necessarily gotten better, it hasn't gotten worse," he said. "And when I had this offer to do this thing with VOIVOD, I wasn't gonna turn it down no matter what. I wanted to play, and I wanted to rock out with these guys." Nine dates with his own band E-FORCE follow, starting in the Czech Republic, and after that he intends to get serious again: "I'm not gonna die tomorrow, but I don't want it to get worse and worse and worse."
E-FORCE — named after the nickname Forrest took with him when he left VOIVOD — are finishing an album called "Voivod Revisited", built from re-recordings of "Negatron" and "Phobos" material plus one new original and a cover. VOIVOD guitarist Daniel "Chewy" Mongrain is contributing a solo to their version of "Nanoman", a song whose lyrics were originally written by Ivan Doroschuk of MEN WITHOUT HATS.