Blast From the Past: Gojira

In between discovering new music and listening to my most recent favorites, I often find myself going back in time and pulling out an album or an entire discography of a band and re-immersing myself in the sounds of my past - so to speak. Think of it like hearing a song on the radio from about 10 years ago and just getting hit with a bit of nostalgia, same principle.

Well two weeks ago I was flipping through my iPod at the time and laughing about how lately I've found myself falling on bands between the letters A to D or H and beyond. One of the primary reasons is the ID tags on some of my mp3's, in particular my Dropkick Murphy's albums are just plain awful and have spawned about 12 different versions in the library, so I have the tendency to skip ahead most times.

That was until I was rolling through and a band name caught my eye: Gojira. Time pretty much stopped right then as I rolled back up the list to make sure my eyes hadn't deceived me and surely enough they didn't.

While the word Gojira is the literal name for the iconic Japanese monster better known as Godzilla, the Gojira I'm referring to is most definitely the metal outfit from Bayonne, France.

Gojira is a band I used to listen to a fucking lot back in the day, between high school and my first year at university. I'd often listen to them, with a mix of many other groups during certain specific instances, of ridiculously shameful time wasting that I will not bother mentioning.

That being said I plunged back into their albums and remembered why they were one of my favorite metal bands of old. So it was really funny when one of my friends claimed I had ESP and showed me the following link: http://www.metalinjection.net/upcoming-releases/gojira-record-ep-week.

Needless to say the news piqued my interested and got me excited for yet another future release. Gojira's last release was the album The Way of All Flesh in 2008, so the prospect of new material is awesome.

Gojira uses Progressive and more or less uncommon song structures, and with them blends a range of styles together, including Thrash, Death Metal and Groove Metal, culminating in some truly original and awesome pieces of music.

Their entire collection provides great examples of the range of styles that make up their musical repertoire, so fans of any of the above genres who have never listened to Gojira should definitely give them a listen.

Gojira has toured most recently with Lamb of God, in support of Metallica on their North American tour last Fall.

You can check out Gojira by visiting their offical website at http://www.gojira-music.com/ or their myspace at http://www.myspace.com/gojira.

And per usual here's a bit of a parting gift, with some classic Gojira with the tracks 04 and Blow Me Away You(niverse) from their debut album Terra Incognita, released in 2001.