Returning to the scene of their triumphant introduction to the UK, France’s exceptional extreme export Gojira are back at the infamous Camden Underworld with their monstrous new album ‘The Way Of All Flesh’ now in their cannon. And so, of course, Planet Loud were there to track down main man Joe Duplantier to quiz him in the flesh about all things ‘…Flesh’.
Planet Loud – You’ve been touring the new album, ‘The Way Of All Flesh’, for six months now, so how have your opinions and highlights changed since taking it into the live arena? Have the songs changed in any way?
Gojira – Yeah, every day they are changing, the point of view is changing; the songs are not frozen any more. We can say now they are alive and don’t belong to us anymore, they belong to the people and they belong to this adventure of being on tour, to the whole crew; it’s not like three or four people in the studio, it’s twelve people working together, the sound guy and the light guy, everybody’s grabbing these songs, they have their nicknames or technical specifications and different settings on the wedges and stuff. It’s really coming to life, it’s really interesting, and it’s like giving birth to a baby or something. It’s interesting that you ask this question, because we’re in this process of discovering the album finally, and we get the reaction of the crowd for each song; for example, ‘Toxic Garbage Island’, on the CD it’s pretty technical and tight, but live it’s turning into a hardcore song, really brutal, it’s interesting, the first time we played it we didn’t know how to approach it, we did it like the record, but you find a trick or a way to move on the song and after one or two months it’s a different story, the song’s taken a new path, my voice is finding its way and so on.
Planet Loud – Why the decision to produce the album by yourself this time around?
Gojira – Because on this record I took things from the beginning with my brother; not just the compositions, but there are a lot of decisions in the process and I followed it all the way from A to Z, I did the pre-production myself, I recorded my brother on the drums and the guitars in my apartment and mix them before sending them to Logon [Mader, who mixed and mastered the album]. I was there all the time that Mario [Duplantier, drummer] did the drums over in LA. I followed the whole process and gave it direction; Mario would give his advice and skill, but each time there’s a decision he’s asking me. And when we went back to France to do the guitars, I asked our soundman to show me all the different microphones we could use to record the guitars and I would choose the right one for each part according to how I felt it went. And I went over to LA again to do the mixes with Logan and we would talk about the sound and he was trying to understand where I wanted to go. Usually it’s a band effort all the way through, but on this record I was the one who knew the significance of the title ‘The Way Of All Flesh’ and I had to refine that in the music; we’d just finished a lot of touring for ‘From Mars To Sirius’ and had come back from a huge US tour, everyone was exhausted and I felt ready to go through this album.
Planet Loud – The artwork you’ve done for the album seems to be a very important part, in particular with the special addition with all the extra drawings; which comes first, the music or the art?
Gojira – It’s very much an interaction between the music and the artwork; when I wrote the lyrics I had things in my mind that I wanted to express that may not be so defined, and most of the time I need to draw something, just sketch like a face or some smoke, and I’ll start writing words about what I see or feel, and a lot of these drawings become part of the final artwork. It’s all drawn and written at the same time and at the same pace. And Mario did some of the artwork too, especially from when we’re on tour, he’ll take his sketch book and spit on it or put gaffer tape on it, he likes to do these bizarre things, and some of it is very surprising and cool and fits well with the atmosphere of the music because it’s part of the complete project; so it was great we could include so of my stuff and his stuff in it.
Planet Loud – ‘From Mars To Sirius’ was very much an album that came out of nowhere and took the scene by storm, so with ‘The Way Of All Flesh’ always going to be a hugely anticipated album, did you feel the pressure whilst recording it with all the hype that had been built up around you?
Gojira – Yes, we felt it, but it was nothing compared to the pressure we put ourselves under anyway; in Gojira we’re very focused on what we do. But we felt that people were expecting something after ‘From Mars To Sirius’, and a lot of people were telling me “you will never do something better than that”, people would be disappointed because they were so enthusiastic and surprised by it. We felt it, but we didn’t really care, we were totally into the next album, and we have a certain faith in what we do and a certain confidence; and even if people don’t understand what we do, as long as we understand what we’re doing, that’s all that matters.
Planet Loud – Was there a feeling that you couldn’t make ‘From Mars To Sirius’ part two, or was there a certain temptation that it would quite easy to just do the album again as that’s what people wanted?
Gojira – Yes, but at the same time we would have a hard time trying to do that as it was three years between the two albums and a lot of things happened in that time, a lot of touring and human experiences; the relations in the band evolved and we had to learn how to respect each other even more as it’s so hard on tour with ten of you stuck together in a bus, this is not a normal situation. So all of this together finally gives something new in the music, it’s evolving; and I turned 30 for example, and that changes things, different stuff in your mind and such. Even if we tried to do part two, I don’t think we could do it, because we have this idea we want to be honest in the music and express just what we want to express.
Planet Loud – In the music and the lyrics and the artwork you obviously have a lot to say, so what is the philosophy and the message of the band that you are trying to put across?
Gojira – We’re not really an environmental band or anything, but all the way from the beginning, everything’s been about the soul, about the fact that we’re not only a body made of bones and flesh and blood and nerves, there’s more than that and that’s what we’re talking about since the first album and even before that in the demos we saying that you’re alive and you have memories and a personality and you have strength in you, you have the ability to create and you are an intelligent living being; and that’s the message of Gojira, it’s really about respecting yourself in order to respect other people, it’s really peaceful. But at the same time it’s not hippy, we’re thinking a lot about our condition on this planet, not as French white people, but as human beings and as living things and we like to put a lot of things in the music like imagination. There is nothing really to understand from the message, its more ideas and hope that we have for the future. And in that there’s the message let’s not destroy nature, let’s be sensible, let’s be careful about what we have as it’s so precious, we don’t want to kill ourselves; we shouldn’t cut all the trees down and we shouldn’t kill all the fish, that’s part of the message, but it’s all about respect. It’s really simple and universal, you can find that in the music of The Beatles for example.
Interview by Dominic Hemy
