Les enfants sauvages

When pakicetidae evolved into marine mammals, it was to preemptively avoid having to hear this shit. The whale floggers in Gojira are here with a live album that captures their slacktivist rock music in the flesh (no appearances from the Whale Wars guy this time). Though their lyrics suggest caring about the ecosystem and whatnot, their being from France and playing in London suggests a plane flight and the use of a gas guzzling tour bus (not very green). This dishonesty with self and concept extends to the noise pollution that is their music (actually muzak).

It's no wonder this is on Roadrunner records. For a live album, it sounds suspiciously overdubbed to the point of sounding like a studio recording (band looks technically on point but, considering their dishonesty, that could just be a big editing budget). Although the selection of tracks here covers their whole discography, it's funny to see how this band was a sham right out the gate with early songs being indistinguishable from their later ones in terms of structure/substance/etc. All their music is a series of "heavy" drop tuned power chord groove riffs with pick scraping sounds ending each measure before some "soft" post-rock/indie noodling occurs in highly repetitive verse-chorus songs with added "unorthodox" bridges that are incongruous and thrown out there to distract the audience from the pop-rock sensibilities (think U2) disguised as "angry metal music". There were blast beats at a few select parts and the vocals are an invariant constipated broken English shout/grunt (recalling Max Cavalera on Chaos AD with added "unngghhnn" factor), but it does nothing to change the fact that this might as well be Devin Townsend on quaaludes doing Pantera covers (if a tremolo riff is played, it sounds "grooved" out into a 4/4 rock measure).

If you're a fan of indie-rock but are feeling "rowdy", then this media product will provide some transient entertainment before you move on to The Dave Matthews Band and U2. Self-respecting cetaceans and humans alike would be wise to steer clear of this affront to the biosphere. A crappy show where the band looks bored going through typical stadium rock maneuvers that look borrowed from U2 and Machine Head. Even when Slayer got old and started dressing like they'd rather be at a football game while playing crap like Stain of Mind, they looked cool. Vapid.