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Review: VOLA/Voyager, Fleece
A trio from Reno, Nevada, tour support Four Stroke Baron get just 30 minutes to impress with their energetic brand of thoroughly modern prog-metal. It’s hard not to be reminded of Devin Townsend, who mixed their presumptuously titled recent album, Classics. But although FSB rely rather heavily on triggered sounds amid the guitar chug, they make plenty of friends at the Fleece tonight.
“We’re Voyager from Perth, Western Australia,” announces Danny Estrin as the capacity crowd swiftly warms to his band’s winning brand of sunny, bouncy progressive pop-metal. Indeed, excellent guitarists Simone Dow and Scott Kay don’t stop bouncing up and down from opener Colours all the way to euphoric set closer Ascension. In between, everyone sings along to the super-catchy Submarine and Brightstar, underlining Voyager’s status as leading lights in the Australian prog renaissance and an outlier amid all the gloomy black metal on the Season of Mist label. They also came close to becoming this year’s token metal act at the Eurovision, but were defeated in the televised Australia Decides contest. “The jury said no, but the people said yes!” keytar-favouring Estrin tells us as he introduces their jolly electro-prog contender, Dreamer (no relation to the Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson song, though one could argue that Voyager are to prog-metal what Supertramp were to seventies progressive rock).
This isn’t the first time they’ve been here, having played a low-key show at The Lanes back in 2019. “Do you want us to come back?” Estrin asks, eliciting a huge affirmative roar.
is needed now More than ever
Witnessing Denmark’s splendid VOLA supporting Haken on this very stage three years ago, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that they’d be back here headlining soon. That took a little longer than anticipated because of you-know-what, but here they are with a well-deserved hit album, Witness, under their collective belt and forming the bulk of their set. This is state-of-the-art riffy prog-metal with electronic overtones, distinguished by Asger Mygind’s distinctive high, clear and precise vocals. And at least they’ve brought along keyboard player Martin Werner this time, rather than relying on samples as they did at the previous show.
VOLA make full creative use of the Fleece’s much-improved lighting rig as they romp through a set whose highlights include Witness stand-outs These Black Claws (though it’s a shame they didn’t bring the scary bloke to deliver the rap/spoken word section), Head Mounted Sideways and magnificent closer Straight Lines.
The quartet barely pause before launching into the encore, which returns to Applause of a Distant Crowd for Whaler before concluding with a stunning Inside Your Fur. Expect to see them in a bigger venue next time.
Main pic of VOLA – Credit: Nikolai Linares
Read more: Metal & Prog picks: September 2022
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