Canadian heavy metal veterans Voivod closed their current European festival tour with a non-festival date in Oslo, Norway this past weekend. The four-piece, fresh from a show at the Hole In The Sky festival in Bergen, played an inspired set of classics from their catalog with most of the tunes ranging from the War & Pain – Angel Rat period. The group released a new record earlier this summer called Infini. The album represents the last songs written by late guitarist and founding member Denis ‘Piggy’ D’Amour, who lost his battle with colon cancer in 2005.

The current Voivod line up includes vocalist Denis ‘Snake’ Balenger, Michael ‘Away’ Langevin on drums, bassist Jean-Yves ‘Blacky’ Thériault and new guitarist Dan Mongrain from Canadian prog metal technicians Martyr.

The band ripped through a 90-plus minute set of vintage Voivod tunes including Brain Scan, Nothingface and signature opener Voivod. Given the billing as classics tour, the group played only one song from the new record – the thump-filled Global Warning. The set closed with a two-song encore of Nuclear War and Astronomy Domine.

Guitarist Mongrain used only two guitars during the set – a custom M1-Alpha from Canadian luthiers Guerilla Guitars, which he now endorses and a custom Laboratore guitar, similar to the one played by Piggy in the past and the bass still played by Blacky. His rig consisted of backline amp – a Marshall JCM-2000 head and 4×12 cab. There were two of these behind him, but he only utilized the one unit. He ran his guitars into a Rocktron Chameleon effects rack unit with pre-set tones for rhythm, solos etc… that he switched between via a foot controller. There were two Chameleons in the rack – one for use, one for back-up. Redundancy is always a good idea, but it was not Dan that needed it for this show, it was Blacky. He blew his Marshall head about mid-way through the set and needed to quick swap job to get the evening back on track.

Voivod is returning to Canada and has a pair of dates lined up in Mexico with Testament later this month. The band also is said to be looking at a possible South American tour. No dates for the US are planned at this time.

Check out the photo gallery from the show below and look for an extended interview with Mongrain here later this week!