L'Enfant Sauvage

In a statement about Gojira’s fifth album, L’Enfant Sauvage, (translation The Wild Child), frontman Joe Duplantier wrote, “When you become a musician you don’t have a boss telling you what to do. [But] with freedom comes responsibility.”

French filmmaker Francois Truffaut may have asked himself the same question when he directed L’Enfant Sauvage in 1970. The movie is about a child raised in the wilderness, who is captured and urged to abandon his wild ways. Even when civilized, however, he retains his wild streak, or “freedom.” The same can be said of Gojira. Whether or not Duplantier was referencing Truffaut when he and his band wrote the follow-up to 2008′s The Way of All Flesh, by taking creative liberties and reveling in his musical options, Gojira broke boundaries and crafted their finest record and a strong contender for metal album of the year.

Duplantier’s awareness of his responsibility to his fans is what makes L’Enfant Sauvage more than an experimental hodge-podge of distorted guitar noise and arrhythmic composition. The songs are arranged to be sensible and palatable, presented in a framework of atmosphere and melody that tempers the turmoil. It’s not that Gojira have made concessions to their audience; they’ve merely become… read more »