Michel Langevin
As a member of the classic Canadian metal band Voivod, Michel Langevin, better known under the pseudonym "Away", has made himself responsible for both iconic album covers and his influential way of playing drums. Hinsides managed to get a moment with this interesting musician and artist to hear what he had to say about all previously unanswered questions.
Text and image: Hinsides 2020
-I'm not a cat! I'm not a cat! The response to my initial question about whether there is something that Michel Langevin, aka ”Away" would prefer to talk about, or preferably avoid as a topic of conversation, wasn’t really what I had expected .
-I'm sorry, but I came to think of a funny clip that did circulate some time ago. That one with a judge from Texas that succeeded to replace his own face with a cat filter during a digital meeting, haha.
When I finally understand that the living legend on the other side of the screen is associating rather freely based on the situation we found ourselves in, the pieces fall into place and we can start our unfiltered conversation in a less confused fashion. A conversation in which this friendly soul opens up about his art, the music of his band Voivod, and how it all started.
Voivod. “War and Pain” era.
- I can not have been more than 4-5 years old when we made a visit to an older cousin and his family. I still remember this occasion quite vividly due to one particular reason. Hanging on a billboard in their home was a note with a drawing of Atom Ant that my cousin had drawn. This character was beating up villains in a cartoon series that I loved so I got completely ecstatic and had to ask if my cousin perhaps was willing to give away this piece of desirable art? Well, it turned out that he was not, but instead he showed me how I could make my own drawing. Much later, in the mid 90's, when the band was in a kind of disillusioned state and I had become interested in developing my skills in digital art, I was told that my cousin was working with teaching courses in digital image processing. That´s how the cover image to our album "Negatron" (1995) came to be. A digital work that has a big Ant on it as a tribute to two of my childhood heroes.
Who else than Atomic Ant?
Can you remember any other early influences to you as a visual artist?
-When I was really young I guess it was children's books and TV series, like "Ultra Man", that fascinated my imagination. Then the 70's rock bands appeared, and acts like Alice Cooper and Kiss, that clearly had a conceptualized visual image, became my next big influence. Especially Kiss album "Alive One" became important as both influence and inspiration and I remember that I drew a lot of pictures out of the excitement I got from that record. Later on I discovered publications like Heavy-Metal with artists such as Bilal, Moebius and Philippe Druillet, and my drawings came to be more influenced by science-fiction. "The Cold War" was a reality during these days and much of the apocalyptic feeling preserved in other art from this time can be found in the early work I did for Voivod. Movies like "Eraserhead", "Mad Max" and "The Wall" also made a strong impression along with documentaries like "If you love this Planet", which raised environmental issues. We lived close to beautiful natural areas but also in the shadow of both the global nuclear arsenal and a local aluminum factory that was located near where I grew up. Once I followed the outlet of a lake that was nearby and whose water was completely discolored by chemical waste. Where the water reached the river I found a lot of dead fish in the water. It was probably events and contrasts like this that somehow provided me with horrible post-apocalyptic images and visions. Along with impressions from film and other popular culture of that age.
The red lakes nearby the aluminum factory in Jonquière.
So, how was it like to grow up in a place like Jonquière? (A community north of Québec.)
- Oh, It was great! As stated earlier, we were close to beautiful nature and sometimes we did excursions with the school. Once we visited a "ghost town" where most of the inhabitants had died of some disease in the early 20th century. But the houses were still there and I made some drawings there. Unfortunately I do not think I have any of those left. When we had recorded our debut Lp "War and Pain", we all moved down to Montréal, but until then it was cool to live in Jonquière. In fact, there was a really good heavy-metal climate around Jonquière and we were a bunch of kids who organized trips down to Montréal to make sure not to miss when the big tough bands, like Iron Maiden and such, came by.
How were you and your friends perceived by the rest of the community?
- Well, obviously not everyone appreciated our music or appearance. I remember, for example, that someone left a note outside our rehearsal room at some point that said something like we were up to ”no good”, haha, but nothing worse than that from what I can remember.
Were there any other bands in Jonquière around this time?
-Yes, there was. Death Dealer and Messiah Force are two other bands that were active at the time. Voor is another example. When we moved down to Montréal, we discovered to our surprise that people were more into 70's rock here. That or Hard-Core. We attended to some Hard-Core gigs, and as a long-haired hard rocker it could almost be a little daring, hah. Luckily, we got to know the members of Unruled who made sure that we didn´t end up in the gutter.
The school trips of the late 70-ties were something else.
So how did ”War and Pain Happen”?
- It was our friend Wane Archibald who made sure that our demo ended up in the hands of Metal-Blade. Wane was a big music enthusiast and something of a key person in the circles we were in. Through his tape-trading activities we came in contact with new harder music from England, both punk and heavy-metal, and it was he who took the first band photos of Voivod. And the last ones as well, haha. So we got in contact with this label and then we had to borrow 5oo dollars each from Snakes' mother to record the songs that ended up on their compilation "Metal Massacre V".
This in turn led to a full-length contract and the rest is, as they say, history. We became part of this whole "Thrash-Metal" explosion that erupted in the late 80’s and suddenly we were out on tour together with bands like Celtic Frost and Kreator. Totally insane.
Was it you who decided who would do the cover of your debut Lp?
-Hahaha, yes! I honestly could not see anyone else doing what we were looking for. The company was very thoughtful about this move at first but when they finally saw the result they became more positive. I have no training so all my covers have been a long journey. In the end, I managed to get close enough to the vision of what I wanted to express with the ”War and Pain” cover and I am still very happy and proud of that piece. That one, together with the cover of Dave Grohl's project "Probot", are probably the covers that mean the most to me both personally and as an artist.
When I did the cover of Dave's project, I worked with digital coloring of 3-D images and had access to good equipment. Previously, I had used a regular Commodore 64 to create the digital graphics, but there in the early 2000s I could work with better programs, which was very fun.
The cover of Voivods debut Lp.
You´ve just read an excerpt from a longer interview with Michel Langevin that will be featured in its entirely in the next issue of Hinsides Magazine. The last copies of the first issue are still available here