Given that for a long, long time my phone's ringtone was Voivod's Brain Scan, seeing that they were to hit my home town not long after releasing what is definitely a late-career highlight in The Wake was definitely an electric shock (to me) and I made sure to mark it on my calendar. The Rebellion was new to me as a gig venue, but it's excellent; despite basically being a large room with a stage and a bar, the sound was great, the bands were very close to the audience, and the bar prices were cheap to the point that this nearly became a Liver Report!

I was a little late but caught two songs from Greek openers Bio-Cancer, who play an aggressive form of thrash metal fronted by the rasping shriek of Lefteris. Extreme metal is probably the only genre where the fact that the band's two albums to date are named Ear Piercing Thrash and Tormenting the Innocent is a good thing; it's a noisy, riff-driven, good time, and I look forward to checking their studio material out.

Voivod are giants in the metal world, but this was a smallish, intimate gig. Opening with the title track from 2016's Post Society EP, Voivod played their hearts out to an appreciative crowd, in a solid set that had plenty of past highlights like Ravenous Medicine and Order of the Blackguards from 1987 classic Killing Technology (as well as Overreaction as an encore) only playing Orb Confusion, Iconspiracy, and Always Moving from The Wake. Technocratic Manipulators from Dimension Hatross was a highlight, as was Nothingface's Into My Hypercube and even The Prow from Angel Rat was thrown in.

When you have a back catalogue as varied and uniformly excellent as Voivod's there must be songs left out, but it was interesting that nothing from 2013's Target Earth featured. Every fan could make their own ideal Voivod setlist (I'd have swapped The Lost Machine from The Outer Limits for the catchier Fix My Heart, for example) and I am a little sad that I've still not heard Brain Scan live yet, but getting to grab Away's hand at the end of the gig was a privilege and I was more than delighted to have experienced the band in such a small, close setting. As a live experience this is definitely recommended for anyone that appreciates Voivod's unique sound.