How very difficult it is, in a metal landscape more saturated with music than ever before, to establish a distinctive sound — so distinctive that even brief excerpts from any randomly chosen song will shout the band’s name. How much more difficult it must be for a band who have accomplished that feat to move forward, to create something that’s genuinely new (and riveting) without sacrificing the character of the music that makes it so instantly recognizable. Yet that’s the trick that Gojira have pulled off on their new album L’Enfant Sauvage.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has closely followed Gojira’s meteoric trajectory. From one album to the next, the Duplantier brothers and their comrades Jean-Michel Labadie and Christian Andreu have displayed consistent intelligence, attention to detail, and consummate craftsmanship both in composing their works and in performing them. Refreshingly, they have persisted in following their own muse, without pandering to trends or commercial inducements. They’ve become popular without grasping for popularity, both challenging listeners and pleasing them, evolving along a path they’ve carved for themselves while pulling increasing numbers of slobbering fans along in the vortex of their slipstream.

The essential ingredients of Gojira’s sound are all present in the new songs: the stomping syncopated rhythms and odd time signatures; Mario Duplantier’s complex, off-kilter percussion; the squealing whine of a harmonic pickslide; the use of repeating, hypnotic, imminently headbangable riffs; the dominance of dissonance that still leaves room for head-grabbing melodies; the attention to mood-altering dynamics and a penchant for experimentation; and Joe Duplantier’s distinctive mid-range howl that’s somehow capable of carrying a melody as well as clawing flesh.

And of course, the music is still some of the heaviest matter in the universe: it crushes, while leaving that distinctive Gojira stamp on your mangled carcass.

Yet L’Enfant Sauvage holds surprises in store that make the album intriguing as well as pulverizing, like veins of gold that sparkle unexpectedly in a deep, well-mined strike. Continue reading »