The 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony was filled with memorable moments. Paris spared no expense, bringing one of the most creative opening ceremonies in recent memory. One of the ceremony’s most jarring moments came during the section about the French Revolution. The shocking image of a decapitated Marie Antoinette barely had time to sink in before columns of fire shot in front of the Conciergerie palace, along with singer Marina Viotti. To soundtrack this dramatic moment, Paris brought its most brutal ambassador, the metal band Gojira.
As someone who’s seen Gojira live and a huge fan of heavy metal, I felt a moment of pride to see this abrasive genre embraced by the world as the Olympics welcomed the first metal band to perform at a ceremony. Luckily Gojira’s face-melting rendition of “Ça Ira” is very indicative of the rest of their catalog. While there’s no going wrong with Gojira, here’s a general guide to what to expect getting into Gojira.
When it comes to straightforward metal headbangers, the band’s biggest track “Stranded”, stand’s atop their discography for a reason, and I think is a fairly good introduction point to Gojira at large. It wastes no time getting your head banging to its instantly memorable chorus. Luckily for American listeners, unlike their performance at the Olympics, a majority of Gojira’s catalog is sung in English.
Just like their performance, however, Gojira’s music almost always has a very pointed lyrical message, The song, and the whole album it comes from, Magma, revolves primarily around the loss of the mother of Gojira’s drummer Mario Duplantier and vocalist Joe Duplantier. Going further into the brutal end of things, “L’Enfant Sauvage” and “The Art of Dying” are also great tracks, with the latter feeling like a rant over a steady guitar in the best way possible.
If you want to ease yourself in and were slightly intimidated by “Stranded”, or what you heard at the Olympics, Gojira’s most recent work, namely their 2021 album Fortitude, features some of the band’s most accessible work to date without losing any of its brutality. “Another World” is a great example of this. It’s a rather simply structured song, with short verses that lead into an instantly catchy and anthemic chorus. The instrumental break in the middle of the track also samples Gojira’s ability to combine soaring melodies with a dark heavy backbone, and the outro shows the band’s talent in more delicate moments. The song takes a pretty common lyrical theme for Gojiraa. It talks about deforestation and colonization in South America, a social cause the band has put a lot of time and resources into through the Fortitude album cycle.
This focus on environmental issues can also be seen in records such as their 2005 breakthrough From Mars to Sirus. This earlier work from the band is much more brutal and technically head-spinning than their newer material. While not for everyone, songs from that record such as the landmark “Flying Whales” is a seven-plus minute tour de force of Gojira’s dynamic songwriting. Mixed with a down-tuned, open-string, chugging guitar, it created the sound employed so well at the Olympics. Gojira’s roots in a technical death metal band, plus its high concept about the death of the earth and the rebirth of life, are not only important in understanding Gojira as a band. It’s also still incredible to listen almost 20 years later.
There are no weak moments in the Gojira discography. If any of the songs we’ve recommended connect with you, listening to the full record they come from is a pretty surefire route to success.
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