Gojira
L'Enfant Sauvage

A few weeks ago Darren told me he was listening to the new album by Gojira and that it was a killer album, wouldn’t you say that such a thing raises expectations? I mean a musical device that can actually kill annoying people, isn’t that what we have always wanted? Anyway this album called L’Enfant Sauvage comes four years after its predecessor so it is not like they are in a rush making albums these frenchmen who call themselves Gojira after having to abandon their original band name Godzilla due to legal reasons. That is why they named themselves ゴジラ which is the kanji spelling of the same thing, the clever thing is though that in ローマ字 it becomes Gojira. For you without a clue I can say that the kanji writing here means romaji which is the latin way of writing japanese or romanizing as it can also call it. So from the debut album an onwards their name is Gojira but if you are looking for any of their demos I suggest you use the Godzilla moniker. They have taken themselves this name due to the nature of this 大怪獣 due to its birth from radioactive mutation, something that can be described as a way of ruining our world, something that these guys strongly objects to as they really love nature and all its diversity.

Lets now return to L’Enfant Sauvage which means something in terms of “the wild child” but more in a sense of wild being free of convention and free of preconceptions, albeit maybe we shouldn’t even bother trying to translate the title as a title or a name is universal anyway and an english translation would just not pinpoint the point of the title if we are to trust Joe Duplantier who is the singer of this band. It is the fifth album by the band and it is supposed to be their best to date, or at least the most diverse one if I am to believe what Joe told me when I spoke to him about it.

So what about this album then? Well, it has eleven tracks and it plays for 52 minutes and the song titles are generally in english. But I suppose that wasn’t quite the information you were looking for, the music of ゴジラ is not easily quantified in a genre or with a label. It is very diverse encompassing many different musical directions, sometimes travelled simultaneously. This leads the album into being very complex and require a bit of a attention from you as a listener if you want to get the most out of it, it is also music that requires time to process and you probably need to listen quite a few times in order to make it fall into place and become more understandable. It is not music that you just start for going in the background while you are solving very complex quadratic equations or similar mathematic difficulties, it would be quite disturbing for that. It is based in the extreme and the music is often very heavy and the vocals are mainly growling or screaming. So it is a bit of a challenging album that shows a very complex musical structure.

Is it a killer then? Yes and no I would say, if you throw the disc and manages a perfect hit on the perfect spot I suppose you could kill someone with it, the music will probably not kill anyone though. It is a great album even though it cannot really be used as a weapon but I am quite sure it would be against what this band stands for to do so anyway. I think the music travels in directions not always travelled and the atypical song structures makes for a thinking person’s music and that is just better in most cases. The album’s dynamic feel and the strong musicianship are other characteristics that makes this into one of the most interesting extreme metal albums of 2012 this far. It is an enjoyable musical journey taking you to places not very often travelled and what better way to do that than with ゴジラ.

Looking at the songs I think that the opening track Explosia is my favourite, not only does it set the tone just right, it is also an excellent song and following that comes ten more very good songs and in the end you feel very pleased with what you have just heard, it is one good album and I believe that if I were to summarise 2012 today in the middle of may this album would probably end up on the top ten list. I think that the only weaknesses this album has is that it tends to become a bit static at times which I think is a consequence of the musical style of the band where more conventional approaches would seem quite static and uneventful in comparison with the rest, and that the album is not yet released. L’Enfant Sauvage with ゴジラ is definitely one album to look into if you are interested in music that does more than just fill the silence in the radio waves.