Voivod: Symphonique (2LP Orange Vinyl)

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Voivod’s Symphonique is a live album with full symphonic orchestra, recorded on 4 June 2025 with the Orchestre symphonique de Québec at the Grand Théâtre de Québec, conducted by Dina Gilbert. It is set for worldwide release on 5 June 2026 via Century Media Records.

This is the kind of release that could have gone horribly wrong with a lesser band. A lot of “metal with orchestra” albums end up feeling bloated, polite, or like the arrangements are just there to make the whole thing look expensive. Voivod are weird enough, angular enough, and musically adventurous enough to actually make this sort of thing feel natural. Their catalogue already has that cosmic, dissonant, progressive quality built into it, so putting those songs in front of a full orchestra does not feel like a stunt. It feels like an extension of the band’s universe.

That is the real appeal of Symphonique. It is not trying to soften Voivod or dress them up in prestige clothing. It sounds like a carefully chosen cross-section of the band’s sci-fi metal brain, expanded rather than diluted. The set pulls from multiple eras, which is exactly what you want with a band like this. You get modern material like “The End Of Dormancy” and “Holographic Thinking,” but also classics like “The Unknown Knows,” “Into My Hypercube,” “Forgotten In Space,” “Nuclear War,” and “Astronomy Domine.” That gives the album real weight as both a live document and a celebration of how strange and forward-thinking Voivod have always been.

As a review, this looks genuinely promising because Voivod are one of the few long-running metal bands whose music already contains the tension, drama, and left-field movement that orchestral treatment needs. Their best material has always sounded like machinery mutating in space, so hearing it refracted through symphonic arrangements makes conceptual sense. This should hit hardest for listeners who love the band’s progressive side more than the raw early barbarism, but even then, the setlist has enough bite and history in it to keep things from drifting into overproduced theatre. It feels less like “Voivod goes classy” and more like “Voivod gets even more alien.”