Gojira: L'Enfant Sauvage Review

8/10

For my next review, I will be reviewing the fifth album by the French band Gojira. It was released June 26, 2012, and is called L'Enfant Sauvage, meaning "The Wild Child". This is the only Gojira album I've ever listened to, but I was very impressed by it.

01 Explosia: That's how this song begins: explosively. It's built up slightly before tearing into the song with a thunderous riff, and a growled "Go!" from Joe Duplantier. What becomes quickly apparent is that Gojira certainly have their very own unique sound, and that sound comes from the very quickly picked notes played high up on the fret board. It's a sound/technique that's repeated many times throughout the album, and I love it. It's great because it's very easy to tell that you're listening to a Gojira album. The song calms down around the 4 minute mark for about 10 seconds before returning to the explosions, which is all instrumental for the rest of the song. This is also the longest song of the album, clocking in at 6:39.

02 L'Enfant Sauvage: The opening riff for this song is amazing. And when Joe's vocals come in... Man, they're good. This is the most emotional I've heard him sound on this album, and it works really well. It can be pretty hard to distinguish emotion in growled/yelled vocals, but Joe's emotion comes through loud and clear on this song. A bit more laid back than "Explosia", this song kicks serious ass nonetheless, and I'm legitimately upset when it comes to an end. So upset that I think I'll just give it one more play...

03 The Axe: It's funny that this song is called "The Axe", because the opening riff sounds a bit like a chainsaw. Which is metal as all seven hells. There's some seriously fast playing done on this song. And Mario Duplantier (oh, Joe's brother! The things you learn from Wikipedia!) is one hell of a drummer. The really fast bell-sounding drumming parts (I'm a guitarist, not a drummer if you couldn't tell) are super awesome too. Christian Andreau's trademark guitar playing is a standout on this song. The softly sung group vocals at the end of the song are a very nice touch.

04 Liquid Fire: Oh actually, Joe sounds fairly emotional on this song too. Or it's just not quite as growly as previous songs. This is the first song of the album to properly feature any kind of background vocals. These background vocals sound sort of as if they were sung into a fan, and remind me a bit of Fear Factory harmonies. This song actually use a lot of background vocals, which is a cool change.

05 The Wild Healer: This song sounds a lot like the soundtrack for an NES game at the beginning. And it really doesn't sound anything like a Gojira song to start off with. Oh it should be mentioned that this track is an instrumental, and the shortest song of the album (1:48 long). This certainly is a very interesting track.

06 Planned Obsolescence: This song sounds a bit slower and more chuggier in comparison to the previous couple of songs. The drumming is certainly less frantic during the verses. This song also has some rather Fear Factory-esque vocals in it. It's not quite as good as the first four songs in my opinion, but it's still a decent enough song. For the last minute it lapses into a piano piece with the occasional bit of drumming thrown in for good measure (my technical drumming terms for the win!)

07 Mouth Of Kala: This is a really good headbanging song. There's a constant bass drumming going on, courtesy of Mario Duplantier. This will be another really heavy one. Man this guy must have legs of steel. This bass pedalling is constant. I wonder if Fear Factory was an influence on Gojira? Because there certainly are some similarities that I'm noticing now. Aww Wikipedia doesn't list them as an influence. Maybe not then.

08 The Gift Of Guilt: Wow this is a really nice gentle start. Just guitar being played, before drumming and bass comes in at about 28 seconds. A bit more of a melodic song so far. Ooh this one has a very interesting sound that I think is played on the guitar. I have no idea on how to recreate that sound though. Possibly a muted slide down the neck. Apparently Gojira started off in 2001 as a death metal band. They really don't sound like death metal anymore though. They sound like... Gojira. This is also a very good song incidentally. The chorus is sung really well.

09 Pain Is A Master: I like the beginning of this song. It sounds a bit more progressive, with some whispers in the background. It keeps up that progressive-y riff for a minute and 7 seconds before launching into typical Gojira heaviness and Christian Andreau guitars. Oh my this actually sounds a lot like a death metal song. Right after I said they didn't sound like that anymore... Ah well, this is an epic song. And it's probably the heaviest song of the album so far, even taking into account the sometimes proggy-ness of it.

10 Born In Winter: Oh this song also sounds rather progressive too. It's interesting how they decided to put the two proggy songs together instead of sandwiching them with plenty of heavy groovey metally metal songs. This song reminds me a bit of Mastodon's "The Sparrow", because they're both quite slow with vocals sung very low. However, Joe soon reverts to his yelling/growling vocals. Wow the song ends quite abruptly there.

11 The Fall: And we've now reached the last track of the standard edition album. There's two more bonus tracks on the special edition version of the album, but I'm not going to be reviewing them. Well, "Pain Is A Master" may have sounded like a death metal song because of the guitar playing, but this song sounds very death metally because of the singing. Joe definitely lapses into a death metal roar at a couple of points there. The song starts to sound a bit Fear Factory-ish again at around 3:20. But it still has Gojira originality. And the song ends with some increasingly scrambled guitar sounds.

In my opinion, this was a really good first Gojira album to listen to. It's intrigued me enough to try out some of their other stuff, and I can see why Metal Hammer raved about it. I give "L'Enfant Sauvage" EIGHT metal little sparrows out of TEN. Excellent work lads!

Favorite song: L'Enfant Sauvage

There's still a few dates left on Gojira's current North American tour, so if you haven't got tickets, try and grab them now!: http://www.gojira-music.com/tour