The Link

Gojira's newest record was a very impressive mix of thrash, death and metalcore with a bit of doom thrown in, and I was expecting this one to be equally good. While it doesn't have the same huge epic vision of the From Mars to Sirius, it's still a progressive and very solid mix of genres, but a lot faster and heavier.

One of the things I noticed fairly quickly in this album was how much Gojira use techy riffs. Rememberance has a few pretty awesome off beats riff, with a super tight flurry of guitar and double kick. It's pretty damn tight and awesome, and when some weird didgeridoo type effect comes over the top, it fits perfectly. Death of Me has some awesome quick bursts of death metal tremelo, although there's also some weird death metal pirate song (best description I've got for it) bits in that song, which suggests Gojira haven't quite got their song writing honed to the point they had it in From Mars to Sirius.

Still, there's plenty of great bits here, like the sudden speedy bits in the title track, the clean respite that's Torii, the spine-tingling chants and semi industrial riffing of Embrace the World (terrible song title, though). The powerful doomy intro and wall of sound ending of Inward Movement rocks, as do basically all of the unexpected yet totally fitting changes in time signature/speed/mood that happen in almost every song. Gojira don't write with a predictable structure, and a few times in this album, some completely unexpected instrumentation will kick in, and it's always to great effect. Don't get me wrong though, every part flows perfectly into the next bit.

All of Gojira are very skilled at their instruments. The guitars do plenty of dissonant stuff but they are also adept at melody, and they're incredibly versatile, while the rythym section locks in tightly, providing a great backing for the guitars. The drums are really solid. There's plenty of unique drum beats and fills, and there's the occaisonal blast beat too. All of this has been recorded really well too. The guitars are super thick and the vocalist has been mixed perfectly. The only real complaint I have is that sometimes the song-writing gets a bit unfocused, but that's fairly rare. All in all, a really good prog death/thrash album that most metalheads should love.

Edit: Just dropping the score down by a bit. It's still a great album, though.