In a new interview with Bill Bailey of Today's Boondoggle Podcast drummer Michel "Away" Langevin of Canadian progressive sci-fi metal innovators VOIVOD spoke about how skyrocketing fuel prices as a result of U.S.

military action in Iran have affected his band's ability to make ends meet on the road.

He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Man, it's really hard to justify going on the road sometimes.

Post-pandemic — as soon as we started to tour internationally after COVID, we realized everything was more expensive.

Everybody was trying to catch up.

And so hotels, tour bus, even the gas and even the crew was more expensive because they were trying to catch up from two years of doing nothing.

And now, with the war in Iran and the gas prices going crazy, we planned a budget for what's coming up this summer, but I'm not exactly sure the numbers are gonna match in the end.

So it's always a scary experience.

Thank God the people into VOIVOD are really loyal, and they show up at the shows.

And not only that, but they buy a lot of merch.

And so it always saves the tours that we do these days — always.

We just did a stretch in USA, and just the first show we sold so much merch we had to order more.

So, yeah, it's a good thing." VOIVOD's new album, "Symphonique", a special live collaboration with the Quebec Symphony Orchestra (Orchestre Symphonique De Québec),was made available on June 5, 2026 worldwide via Century Media Records.

"Symphonique", which functions like an epic piece of cinema, showcases VOIVOD's pioneering futuristic metal with the strains of a symphony orchestra, and features a carefully curated VOIVOD best-of setlist composed of 12 songs across 73 minutes, recorded live on June 4, 2025, at the Grand Théâtre in Québec City, Canada.