Voivod geekout & Judas Priest Live: Death Angel European Summer 5
- Bleeding Priest
- Jun 28
- 5 min read
FRANCE!! Hot as a motherfucker! These were the last 2 co-headliners with Municipal Waste. The first show was in Lyon. Being that it was a Monday night and the venue was kind of in the middle of nowhere I was kind of expecting it to be a dead night but I couldn’t have been more dead wrong. The place was PACKED! And this crowd won the loudest, most rambunctious lot of the tour without question. They were crowd surfing and stage diving throughout the set. It was a great time.
The second gig was in Toulouse. This venue actually had civilization around it and even a quaint little “castle” across the street. This show was also well attended and the crowd was quite enthusiastic.
What made this evening interesting was hanging out with Eric Forrest, formerly of Voivod. He was my guest. For those not in the know he sang and played bass on two KILLER albums from the mid/late 90’s titled NEGATRON and PHOBOS. Three if you count the remix/unreleased/live comp KRONIK. I met Eric back in 1995 when Voivod came through The Bay and played the Berkeley Square (R.I.P.) on the Negatron tour. My band Old Grandad opened. It was a dream come true. He was a very cool dude back then. He still is now….just different.
Our conversations this night were odd, kind of disjointed. I wasn’t quite sure where he was coming from most of the time but I tried my best to keep up and remain polite. I finally got a chance to ask him about a couple of the unreleased tracks on KRONIK, namely “Ion” and “Vortex”. These two songs are about as deep as you can get in the Voivod discography. At first I couldn’t tell if he knew what I was talking about but he suddenly lit up and gave me some neat little tidbits.
For “Ion” he said they threw that song together at the last minute as a bonus track for the Japanese version of Phobos. The drums were all programmed (something I already knew via Away) and the whole thing was written and recorded quickly. He said the band were surprised when the makers of Heavy Metal 2 selected that song for the soundtrack instead of all the other material from Phobos. To be honest that movie kinda sucks but by far the best moment is when “Ion” kicks. It’s so fitting.
With “Vortex” he told me Piggy told him that the guitar line on the chorus was stolen from a Coroner song which blew my mind, being that Tommy T. Baron is one of my guitar heroes. Here you have one my favorite guitarists of all time borrowing ideas from another one of my all time favorites. That’s AWESOME!
Eric also told me the middle section of "Vortex", where the song picks up in tempo was something he came up with and was lifted from another Voivod song, “Tribal Conversations”. All in all it was cool hanging with him. Our conversations may have taken some strange detours at times but I can tell he has a good heart and I wish him and his current band E-Force the best of luck. Oh yeah, thanks for the weed.
Now we enter Spain for a day off at the festival grounds. The Resurrection Fest is right by the coast so a gaggle of us hit the beach and went swimming in the afternoon. Great times indeed. We then hit the town, had some grub and A LOT of sangria. We made sure to get back to the fest to catch the headliner of the evening. Some band called Judas Priest.
Going into this Priest set I hadn’t realized it’s the 35th anniversary of Painkiller. So you might understand why I was taken aback when they played eight, that’s right, EIGHT FUCKING songs from the album. Look, I understand that Painkiller is a VERY important album in the timeline of Priest. That was a do or die record for them and they came out swinging and shocked the world. I get why so many folks love it so and I did as well when it came out.
But in the last 35 years I’ve grown less fond of it. It’s pretty one dimensional and lacks the sense of adventure that made Judas Priest so lovable in the first place. Heck, I reach for Ram It Down more than Painkiller these days. Painkiller is a double edged sword. It revitalized their career (briefly) but it also condemned them to trying to recreate this album time and again to much less than great results.
Barring the last two albums. With Firepower and Invincible Shield they finally broke out of the mold of trying to recapture the vibe of Painkiller and started writing great, catchy Heavy Metal tunes that hark back to their glory days of the 80’s, heck, even the 70’s in some cases.
Speaking of the 70’s, they played one song from their greatest decade, “Hell Bent For Leather” That’s simply unacceptable. They did however throw a major curveball with “Solar Angels”. I fucking LOVE this track and hearing it live for the first time was almost surreal. Halford sounded amazing. I’ve seen Judas Priest a bunch in the past 10 years and this may have been his best performance of them all. Everyone played top notch.
So honestly, aside from completely ignoring their 70’s output which again is totally unacceptable there’s really nothing else to complain about. Everyone around me seemed completely happy hearing 90% of Painkiller. It’s just a personal preference thing. We’re playing with them tomorrow in Portugal. Will I watch them again? Probably….
Holy shit, we go on in like an hour and a half. Stop reading my blog and let me get ready. See you soon for the final installment of the Summer Of Wrath tour diary.
–Bleeding Priest
