- Country: France
- Style: Progressive metal / Groove metal
- Label: Roadrunner Records
- Release date: 30 April 2021
Gojira went catchier on Fortitude, and it suits them. Joe Duplantier produced it himself at the band’s Silver Cord Studio in Queens, with Andy Wallace mixing, and the result is the cleanest, most direct-sounding album they have made. The trademark pick scrapes and the stop-start grooves are all still here. They just get to the point faster.
“Born for One Thing” opens with Mario Duplantier hammering out an odd, lurching pattern that sounds like a machine falling down stairs, and it is the best thing on the record. “Amazonia” rides a strange, twanging hook and a groove you could build a festival around. It was released alongside a fundraiser for the Brazilian indigenous rights group APIB, which fits a record that wears its environmental politics openly.
The middle stretch is where opinions will split. “The Chant” is basically a campfire hymn with distortion, slow and huge, and it works because the band commit to it without irony. “Another World” is pure hook. Purists who want From Mars to Sirius part two will grumble.
Let them. “Into the Storm” and “Grind” prove the riffs still crush, and there is very little fat anywhere. Gojira sound like a band that knows exactly how big they have become, and they wrote an album to match.
Best tracks:
Born for One Thing
Amazonia
Another World
The Chant
Grind
Author’s rating: 9.0/10
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