Name a metal band from France. Go ahead. If you’re a Yankee, it’s likely you can’t. Maybe you can come up with Trust. Maybe it’s because Anthrax covered their Antisocial. Maybe it’s because you know they swapped drummers with Iron Maiden. It might seem to many Americans that France just mustn’t be very metal. Gojira are here to change that image.

Gojira are reminiscent of Sepultura, Soulfly, Voivod, Meshuggah, Morbid Angel, Mastodon, Neurosis, Isis and Don Caballero. But they don’t really sound quite like any of them. Not on the whole, at least. Gojira manage to fuse a number of styles seamlessly to create their own sound.

Straight off the bat From Mars to Sirius opens with Ocean Planet’s intro of whale like noises and then into some heavy mid paced riffing mixed with squealing pinch harmonics and lush spacious, more mellow chording. The vocals are reminiscent of the mid range hardcore influenced vocals of Meshuggah, Mastodon, Neurosis and others with the occasional death metal growl. A great intro to what the rest of the album will bring.

Backbone is next out of the gate and features some well structured mid paced layered riffing. One of the more direct heavy as shit songs on the album. It is the most Death Metal influenced of the tracks, complete with a few blast beats, guttural growls and some sections that remind me of mid era Sepultura. You can’t not like this song.

From the Sky, continues the trifecta of great songs to start this album. It does a great job of mixing up its pace. Making the heavy seem heavier and the fast seem faster. As opposed to simply assaulting you with face peeling riffs, you get brief respites into heavier stomping riffs. Catchy and very well written, the song codas with a wonderful, almost theatrical feeling (yet, very fast and heavy) cascading riff leading into the chorus riff.

I don’t want to do a song by song review, but to just touch on some highlights and give the sense of the album. This is an album, as opposed to a collection of songs. The songs flow from and to each other with much attention paid to pacing and mood. So to that extent, track 4, Unicorn is a very mellow instrumental with no distortion and the sounds of whale calls flowing through it. Track 5, Where Dragon’s Dwell, starts out slightly mellower and builds up to its heavier, faster parts. The Heaviest Matter of the Universe is another great track, one of the album’s best, managing to bring to mind Morbid Angel, Voivod and Sepultura, all in fewer than 4 minutes.

If you want to hear a song that encapsulates everything this album has to offer, look no further than track 7, which opens with over two minutes of slower mellow instrumental mixed with whales sounding. Before cranking into one of the albums best riffs, which makes me think of a combo of Mastodon and Clutch, it lurches forward like a locomotive leading to a heavy double bass driven pre-chorus. The middle eight is a bit more open, before leading into a more death metal feeling section. The pace lightens some before getting much heavier.

In the Wilderness is similar to Backbone in that it is one of the more traditionally death metal sounding tracks, but certainly isn’t confined to any clichés or set structures. World to Come feels a bit more rock and roll for most of the track. From Mars is another atmospheric mellower track. It then leads into To Sirius, for which a video has been filmed according to the band’s official site. A very good song, but I’m not sure it would be the first one I would release. It feels a little less Gojira than some of the other tracks; I suppose is the best way to put it.

The album ends with one its best tracks, Global Warming. Built mostly on hammer ons, it’s the one that makes me think Voivod more strongly than every other song. From the Sci-fi lyrics, to the effects on the voice, to the unique song structure, not likely to be everyone’s favorite, but definitely one of mine.

Normally when a band rolls out a lot of 5-8 minute long songs, you expect to hears lots of solos or intricate, technical riffing; not here. There is nary a solo to be found on the entire album. Honestly, I didn’t even notice that until the third or fourth listen. There is such great structure that solo’s seem unnecessary (Metallica, take note, THIS is what an album of 7 minutes songs that don’t need solos sounds like.) This band still has room to grow, and I have no doubt it will. Therefore, I won’t max them out. 9.0.

This entry was posted by Captain Chaos on Wednesday, 26th April, 2006 at 3:59 and is filed under Reviews, Gojira. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response below. You may view a   printable version of this page. You may download this page in   PDF format.