AFTER seeing the conservative segment’s reaction to Gojira’s crushing performance for the 2024 Olympics, one has to wonder how much more rattled they would be if the organisers had gone with Deathspell Omega, Mutiilation or Peste Noire instead.
Band frontman and rhythm guitarist Joe Duplantier laughed off accusations that the performance was “satanic” and said the song they performed was the 19th century French anthem Ah! Ca Ira.
“It is French (history and charm), you know, beheaded people, red wine and blood all over the place – it is romantic (and) normal,” he reportedly explained with a laugh.
The mainstream training their eyes on any metal band and reflexively calling them “satanic” is par for the course but Duplantier is right in saying Gojira’s performance was not that.
Their songs are typically about something that scares people more: environmental awareness.
Early technical and progressive beginnings
Formed in 1996 by Duplantier and his younger brother and drummer Mario, when they were 19 and 14 years old, the band adapted its name from the Japanese name of Godzilla and began as a technical death metal band.
In the 28 years since, Gojira released seven full length albums and three live albums throughout their journey, carving a large chunk of fans in the underground metal community as well as in the mainstream.
The band’s early albums – Terra Incognita, The Link and From Mars to Sirius – firmly established the “Gojira sound” that would be emblematic of the band’s identity, particularly how the outfit’s taste of technical death metal often weaved in progressive and groove elements.
At the same time, the albums were also cementing the band’s mark in France and overseas due to the highly conceptual nature of the albums, like how Duplantier’s love for whales and marine conservation in From Mars to Sirius has spawned a “whaleposting” community on Facebook.
As much as the first three albums put Gojira’s name on the map, along with their powerful live performances of the album’s songs, they were still not quite friendly to listeners outside of the metal community, at least until somewhere in between the release of 2008’s The Way of All Flesh and 2016’s Magma.
No bad albums
The reason Gojira’s early albums are not for mainstream listeners or radio-friendly is how a lot of songs have complex and technical compositions, like Flying Whales.
An extremely popular song among fans, Flying Whales is almost eight minutes long, with a two and a half minutes-long instrumental-only intro. These albums were simply not made to be radio-friendly and certainly not for the attention span of the TikTok generation.
With their fourth album and onwards, the songs are relatively shorter and punchier the way mainstream songs tend to be and Gojira does not experiment as much, other than The Way of All Flesh’s final song on the album. The 17 minutes-long title track has almost six minutes of silence halfway into the song to symbolise the album’s death and the afterlife concept.
Opinions on which Gojira album first penetrated the mainstream is split among the metal community.
Some claim it was The Way of All Flesh while others say it was Magma. Based purely off the album with the most accessible, “catchy” riffs and themes, it can be argued that The Way of All Flesh is the band’s first mainstream-friendly album and is recommended for those wanting to get into Gojira’s discography as it is quite literally in the middle.
Those who start with The Way of All Flesh can either go backwards chronologically (From Mars to Sirius, The Link, Terra Incognita) if they want heavier, more complex extreme metal or go forwards with L’Enfant Sauvage, Magma and Fortitude, in which Gojira retains its technical death metal and progressive roots musicianship while leaning towards more accessible heavy metal.
