Gojira

In 2021, Gojira find themselves with the world at their feet. Releasing their seventh album, Fortitude, on the back 2016’s Magma – their best-selling record to date – and the host of festival headline slots they earned as a result, they have become one of the biggest metal bands on the planet. Yet they haven’t found their success commercialising their metallic stomp. Instead, Gojira are still as weird, experimental and avant-garde as ever.

“We’re not blind to our success. We want to be the next big metal band,” says drummer Mario Duplantier. “In Gojira, we’re very attracted to the catchiness of metal, but we also love the experimental aspect of our music. So now we have this double approach because we want to make the step up and become a bigger band, but we don’t want to lose who we are.

“The most challenging part of being [in] a band for 25 years is finding that fragile and very small area where we all agree on a direction. I. In the end, the four of us really enjoyed putting all those dynamics into these songs.”