52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #29

Gojira – From Mars to Sirius

(Listenable Records, 2005)

Buy the album here

Godzilla is a gigantic monster.  Whales are huge mammals.  The distance from Mars to Sirius is unimaginably great.  Gojira somehow manages to make sounds that seem larger than all these things.  Theirs is a crushingly heavy yet uplifting sound that holds a contemplative beauty in its brutality.  From Mars to Sirius is an album that will make you feel like a colossus astride the globe, Joe Duplantier’s roars flowing through your veins, but invigorated by a protective sense of belonging to its creatures, resources, and potential.  The heaviness, the deep growled and screamed vocals, the death metal-inspired drums, and thick, equal parts doom/death guitars place Gojira as one of the more extreme bands in mainstream heavy metal.  While heavy metal has often dealt with feelings of isolation, Gojira want us to see that we’re all part of the same ecology, and that we all have a part to play in keeping it alive… even if their music is devastating to all that stand in its path.

Extreme metal tends to engender assumptions.  These can range from the obvious stereotype of thuggish guys peddling mindless noise, to the belief that death metal vocals can be about nothing other than violence.  And while there are plenty of bands throwing their hands high in the air to proudly lay claim to those stereotypes, Gojira show us the other side of extreme music where heaviness, aggression, and loudness are about caring deeply for something, bringing people together, and hoping to be a force for positive change.  In fact, Gojira are at their most effective when their heaviness is more natural or seemingly incidental, as if just an extension of their feelings on the subject.  The Way of all Flesh, the follow up to From Mars..., struggles to produce the same emotional connection simply because it is hitting its listeners too hard.  But here we have incredible moments of heaviness on “From The Sky”, “Where Dragons Dwell”, and “Flying Whales” that never overstep, never impede your emotional connection, and never cease the spine tingling feeling that inspires you to hug everyone and simultaneously kick holes in the wall.  Gojira do what all good heavy metal bands should do: bludgeon you around the ears and make you smile about it.

For many, From Mars… would have been their first Gojira listening experience, but looking back, it’s incredible to note how much of a leap forward in songwriting, performance, and production the album represents.  While the moments of djent-inspired complexity and bruising vocals are all present on their earlier albums, they lack the individuality and ear for hooks and doom heaviness that allows them to stand apart on this and later albums.  The opening track “Ocean Planet” introduces the running theme of the album with gentle whale song, and instantly displays a newfound confidence in their unique identity with riffs built around brutal repeated breakdowns and pinched harmonics, and lyrics preoccupied with the interweaving of nature and human consciousness.  “Backbone” does similar work with a more free-flowing, high tempo approach, blastbeats, expansive guitar sounds, and extended vocal growls.  It’s an attention-grabbing opening salvo filled with diverse sounds, textures, and emotions.  Oddly, having grown up on 90s metal like Machine Head and Fear Factory, Gojira give me a little of everything I’m looking for from heavy music: big guitar sounds, ferocious vocals, double bass pedal action, and loads of pinched harmonics, but with enough hook and melody for me to latch on to.  The main difference being that Gojira wrap it up in the theme of nature and spirituality, so while they’re making you feel like a mean, bad-ass… you’re a caring, mean, bad-ass.

Back-to-back tracks “From Mars” and “To Sirius” take us on an abbreviated journey from the former’s gentle, whispered prelude to the enormous, adrenaline-pumping genius of the latter’s opening riff.  Gojira’s ability to take a simple riff and make it feel epic with the infusion of Mario Duplantier’s intense double-bass led drumming, and the elongated vowels of brother Joe’s death vocals is unmatched in metal right now.  At times Joe Duplantier’s cries are like sheet lightning flashing across the sky, leaving only the memory of its existence before the thunder and depth of his death growl comes to remind you of its power.  “The Heaviest Matter in the Universe” and “Global Warming” are the high points of an album that has not a single bad song.  The former is a pit-starting, thrash-death masterpiece that briefly toys with being too heavy before punishing you with the catchiest song about mental and spiritual anguish you’re likely to hear.  The latter closes out the album with a beautiful, diverse, and rich prog-death culmination of the thematic threads introduced with “Ocean Planet”.  Gojira wear their hearts on their sleeves here, unafraid to proclaim a sense of powerlessness in the face of human arrogance and wastefulness:

We are taking everything for granted
I don't think we should do this now
And when I see the smoke all around
I feel like I'm not

From humankind down there
I feel like glaciers are my eyes
And mountains are my head
My heart is ocean
And I feel all alone
Because everybody's wrong

But they are a positive and forward-thinking group so never let go of hope:

I had this dream, our planet surviving
The guiding stars always growing
And all the worlds
The fates all the countries
They're all rebuilding at the same time
I never fell and always believed in
We could evolve and get older
Open your eyes and let all this flow
Now see a new hope is growing inside

From Mars… is a perfect unit.  Nothing stands out too far, there is nothing that doesn’t belong.  It is focused and aggressive, but confident enough to explore and experiment.  It is unendingly catchy, but has enough depth to have you interested in new ways on every return.  Gojira have, in making an album about the dangers the earth faces, channelled their frustration, hopes, and desires into a timeless piece of music.  It has all the sonic qualities that suggest it will age well, and, even 12 years on, it is as vibrant and modern as it was on its release.  I hope, as I imagine the band do, that the album’s warnings of irreversible damage to the planet don’t prove to be as timeless as I think the music itself will.  Let the warnings be heard.