Gojira - Mutant metal after the catastrophe

The Way Of All Flesh has no narrative concept, but in its own way it is thematically focused: on death. Approached from a philosophical, mystical and spiritual point of view. After all, there's no ecology outside of a notion of connection, of the "link" between the individual and their environment. A connection that takes the shape of the circle between life and death: as in the opener "Oroborus", the mythical serpent biting its own tail, a symbol of infinity. Which in fact picks up again from the alien guitar tapping that closed "Global Warming". The track sails toward progressive shores before exploding with death-metal fury. But it also shows how melody has taken on a weight of its own in the recipe, becoming a stable part of it. An instant classic in the band's catalogue, alongside the following "Toxic Garbage Island", with its math-rock riff in a Meshuggah vein. Instrumental weirdness takes total control on the dark and unsettling "A Sight To Behold".

The heart of the album is occupied by its heaviest tracks, veritable boulders hurled at the listener, which reach their peak on "Adoration For None", written and sung in collaboration with Randy Blythe of Lamb Of God, the band seen as the ultimate expression of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal: a generic umbrella term under which very different artists have been lumped together. Lamb Of God, for their part, are champions of groove-metal, and the endorsement of their histrionic frontman proved decisive for Gojira's popularity overseas. Blythe's presence gives our band the chance to craft one of the bloodiest episodes in their discography. A towering peak, immediately overshadowed by another: "The Art Of Dying" is the perfect embodiment of the Gojira style. A single-note riff, abstract in itself, made concrete by drums and percussion, which weave together a rhythm of extreme mathematical complexity. Almost ten minutes in which the "art of dying" also reveals itself as a lyrical manifesto for the band, a spiritual exercise in piercing the veil of Maya. Buddhist spirituality is a source of inspiration for the band, much as it is for other prog-metal acts such as Cynic.

The tension shows no sign of letting up with "Esoteric Surgery", another desperate and despair-inducing sonic assault. Thematically, the mind-body unity returns, to be sought in a "secret code" inscribed in all things. "Vacuity" is a forced march built on hammering guitars. But Gojira manage to keep pushing for two more tracks, "Wolf Down The Earth" and "The Way Of All Flesh", without any kind of compromise. As mentioned, this is the band's longest and darkest album. A different running order within the tracklist would probably have helped. Either way, The Way Of All Flesh carries with it the expressive and technical heights of a band now launching into a relentless touring period, opening for well-established acts like In Flames, all the way up to giants like Metallica, and playing major European festivals. In 2011 comes a shift on the business side: their contract with Prosthetic expires and Gojira sign with the renowned Roadrunner (a division of Warner), the dominant label in the hard-rock and metal scene.

They just have time to release a live CD/DVD, The Flesh Alive, in 2012, with independent label Mascot. In June of that same year comes L'Enfant Sauvage, their fifth studio album. Personal, introspective, yet markedly different in its compositional, tonal and melodic choices, it's something like a good-natured twin to the previous The Way Of All Flesh. In some ways, it's even more intimate and personal, starting with its French title, taken from the 1970 film by François Truffaut. "The Wild Child" tells the true story of Victor of Aveyron, a young man found at the start of the 19th century in the woods of the Massif Central in France, feral and unable to speak, who never adapted to civilization. The parallel with young Joe Duplantier's own episodes of naturalistic estrangement is strong, alongside the echo of his then-recent experience of becoming a father. But stylistically, this introspective work rests on an openness and variety that looks more toward the prog of From Mars To Sirius than toward sonic extremism. All of it filtered through a richer, sturdier sound, with just the right amount of effects.

"Explosia" starts exactly as its title suggests, a frontal metallic assault in full Gojira style, before dissolving into an instrumental coda that sounds like a statement of intent. In fact, the first half of the record concentrates the more concise and direct tracks, among which the melodic burst of "L'Enfant Sauvage" stands out, in some ways foreshadowing a formula that would become standard on the band's later work. "The Axe" and "Liquid Fire" are direct, anthemic epic rides, more warlike than dark or despairing. But it's starting with the instrumental "The Wild Healer", a hallucinated episode of science-fiction synths, that the album's progressive heart opens up. "Planned Obsolescence", "Mouth Of Kala", "Pain Is A Master": concentrated pieces of five to six minutes that hybridize the math and groove abstraction of Meshuggah with tonal solutions new to the band, with one ear on the progressive sound of "Crack The Skye" by Mastodon. Here and there, hypnotic litanies return in a psych-metal vein, and "Planned Obsolescence" even closes out on an ambient note.

"Gift Of Guilt", on the other hand, picks up and synthesizes many ingredients typical of Gojira, from tapping to the collapsing guitar sound achieved through techniques like bending and harmonics. Thematically, it revisits the dilemma posed by the "wild child": no past, no heritage, and no "gift of guilt". "Born In Winter" is another atypical episode that, in a short span, condenses a post-metal structure, from its initial whisper, through an electric explosion, to a circular return underscored by the continuum of guitar arpeggios. The finale is entrusted to the epic "The Fall", heartfelt and gripping, in which Joe Duplantier's voice moves from the deepest growl he's capable of, through the snarl most truly his own, all the way to a clean, melodic opening.

L'Enfant Sauvage is a peculiar album in Gojira's journey, one in which the feelings to be expressed become more varied, less monochrome, and the music follows suit. It might seem like a transitional record, especially bearing in mind the later Magma, but that would be a mistake. It is instead a powerful synthesis of the many different aspects that by now coexist within the band's soul.

After their third live CD/DVD in 2014, Les Enfants Sauvages, 2016 brings their sixth studio album. Magma is their most melodic album and continues the path leading from the punishing assaults of their early days toward the calmer, more atmospheric interludes of their later albums. What was once a side element of their musical approach has now become the main focus: a melodic, progressive heart, which here prevails over mechanical seizures, epic explosions, and bone-crushing assaults. The shift is evident from "Shooting Star" onward, laid over vocal lines multiplying somewhere between liturgical and psychedelic. The single "Stranded", at a measured pace, reveals the structure of a rock song sung with death-metal energy: it's like listening to the equivalent of what Metallica did with thrash-metal on their self-titled album. "Pray" is perhaps the best synthesis, with monk-like chorus and killer groove-metal alternating in a composition inlaid with lopsided rhythms and prog-metal flourishes. "Low Lands" saves its display of power for the second half, though it never quite reaches the intensity of old.

There's no shortage, however, of moments of devastating violence, simply tempered by melodic and even catchy openings, where the destructive energy is reined in by compositional ideas belonging to the prog-metal tradition. A great example is "Silvera", one of the album's high points, its soul torn between emotional surges, guitars sacrificing themselves in epic riffs, and the armored, oppressive sound that was the star of their early albums. The breathless run of "The Cell" explodes into a majestic melody, the way the more recent Baroness might, the band that comes to mind most often while listening to this album, alongside the Mastodon of "The Hunter".

Inspired by the painful loss of the Duplantier brothers' mother, Magma has the merit of being less scattershot than the band's previous works and much other progressive metal. The tragic inspiration makes the album emotionally compelling, while the more complex compositional ideas also allow for a more cerebral listen. Its limits lie in the lack of any substantial innovation, in melodic vocals that often slip into monotony, and in the absence of the ambition that made From Mars To Sirius a peak the band still hasn't managed to equal.

Gojira return with their seventh album, Fortitude, in 2021. Anticipation was fueled by the fact that the previous Magma (2016) had been a turning-point album: more linear songs, often adhering to classic rock-song structure, with a strong presence of clean vocals. In short, they had done with their early death-metal sound something analogous to what Metallica did with thrash on the black album. So the question is whether this Fortitude is their equivalent of Load.

A less fresh and immediate record than its predecessor, which had its greatest strengths in compactness and evenly distributed inspiration across its tracks, Fortitude falls back into a certain scattershot quality. On one hand, there's an attempt to return to the harsher edges of more extreme metal, combining them with the band's melodic streak, with uneven results: in particular, the choruses of tracks like "Born For One Thing", "New Found" and "Into The Storm" risk sounding fairly interchangeable with one another. That said, they do the job of "opening up" the songs and injecting a good dose of epic feel.

There are also tracks where the new direction is embraced with more spontaneity and coherence: "Hold On" is introduced by a progression of dramatic choral vocals that flows into a sequence of very classic riffs and guitar harmonies (not to mention the inevitable alien tapping, the band's trademark). "Another World" is a perfect example of a unique Gojira skill: the ability to turn a textbook guitar exercise into a genuine riff and build an effective song around it. Thematically, meanwhile, the topos already central to From Mars To Sirius (2005) returns: the space epic as an escape from the planet's environmental collapse.

Ecology and politics: the band's hot-button themes, which on "Amazonia" return to the tropical latitudes of groove-tribal-metal, another key ingredient in the band's recipe. The track is also tied to a charity initiative in support of indigenous peoples. This leads to the one-two punch of "Fortitude"-"The Chant", the most atypical and jarring episode: to sing of the oppression inflicted on Tibet, they put together a powerful psych-blues-metal. The percussion, the choral vocals, the tonal choices: everything helps build an unlikely bridge between the temples of the Himalayas and Louisiana voodoo, in the spirit of Zeal and Ardor. There's even a guitar solo that oozes electricity. No commercial turn here: this is Gojira, inspired and sincere. A new mutation.

Ultimately, it can't be said that the band has once again raised the bar (as claimed instead by Randy Blythe of Lamb Of God, who has always been a fervent champion of his French colleagues). The heights of From Mars To Sirius remain out of reach, and are probably destined to stay that way. But Gojira have still explored new paths, and done so with energy and conviction; what Fortitude loses in terms of focus, it makes up for by rewarding close attention to the folds within its songs.

Contributions by Antonio Silvestri ("Magma")

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