Who are Gojira, the Metal Band from Olympic Opening Ceremony?

If spectators thought the Opening Ceremony’s musical lineup couldn’t get extra thrilling, suppose once more.

Heavy steel music simply made its epic Olympic debut on the 2024 Summer season Video games in Paris, and it’s plain to see why organizers selected French exhausting rock band Gojira to carry out. The award-winning musicians are hailed as rock gods within the Olympics’ host nation, drawing such an audible response from followers over the many years that they *actually* maintain information for his or her loud sound.

The band carried out from platforms off a constructing, fusing their sound Swiss opera singer Marina Viotti. The outcome was an iconic spectacle. 

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Maintain studying to be taught extra about Gojira and its affect on the music world.

Who’re Gojira?

The early days of Gojira — which loosely interprets to “Godzilla”— started in 1993 with teenage French-American brothers Joe and Mario Duplantier jamming out of their storage within the Bayonne suburbs of southwestern France, Joe advised Revolver Journal in 2012. Joe, the band’s rhythm guitarist and vocalist, stated he was first launched to bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden at age 14 due to his cousins, and his rapid determination to type a band was “impulsive.”

“It had a wierd impact on me like no different music,” he continued. “We’d do Metallica covers, however we weren’t ok to do them proper.”

Joe stated Mario, 5 years his junior, went on to begin his personal rock band at 12, they usually have been “ten occasions higher.” However the brothers, at ages 19 and 14, ultimately joined forces to create the band that may turn into Gojira, and in 1996, they recruited then-19-year-old lead guitarist Christian Andreu. Bassist Jean-Michel Labadie joined two years later.

Over the many years, their heavier death- and thrash-metal sound advanced right into a extra non secular and melodic steel model, usually with lyrics supporting human and environmental rights.

The Rise of Gojira

Their early demos, plus their first two albums, Terra Incognita and The Hyperlink, within the early 2000s, gained Gojira immense reputation within the Basque nation’s music scene. Nevertheless, their third studio album, From Mars to Sirius (produced by American file label Prosthetic) acquired them large recognition in Europe. Singles “Ocean Planet” and “Flying Whales,” which highlighted marine conservation and environmental advocacy, helped Rolling Stone listing From Mars to Sirius as one of many high 100 steel albums of all time.

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“Gojira emerged within the early 2000s — a time dominated by black-metal purists and emo-metal crossover scenesters — with a guts-meets-brains combo of rock, thrash, and demise steel,” the music outlet wrote.

Radio play acquired the eye of American demise steel band Lamb of God, they usually grew to become a few of Gojira’s first champions on the steel scene, in accordance with Revolver. Metallica frontman James Hetfield additionally took a liking to their tune “Flying Whales.” In 2009, Gojira joined each bands on tour within the U.S. and Canada, making a good greater identify for themselves on the American steel scene.

In 2012, touring with Metallica on the Stade de France, the nation’s largest stadium, Gojira broke the file with 120 decibels for emitting the loudest sound on the area, in accordance with Le Parisien.

The Duplantier brothers already had robust ties in America from their mom’s facet, they usually stored one foot in France and one other in New York Metropolis, the place Gojira recurrently information at Joe Duplantier’s Queens-based studio. In France, they file at Le Studio des Milans of their hometown of Ondres.

“Since I used to be a child, I’ve been fascinated by town, by New York basically,” Joe stated in a 2013 interview with Decibel Journal. “It’s like an explosion of vitality, tradition, and leisure — there’s a lot occurring in New York, and so many various folks… There’s a lot occurring, which is admittedly good for me, for my spirit. I name Brooklyn residence.”

In New York, Gojira produced their sixth studio album, Magma, which earned them a 2017 Grammy Award nomination for Greatest Rock Album. The album’s single, Silvera, was additionally nominated for Greatest Steel Efficiency. Their 2021 single, Amazonia — which helped increase funds for Indigenous folks’s rights in Brazil — acquired them a 3rd Grammy nomination for Greatest Steel Efficiency.

Gojira has carried out alongside a few of steel’s largest names, together with Cannibal Corpse, Meshuggah, and Youngsters of Bodom. Their music continues to high charts across the globe and has earned quite a few awards and nominations in rock music, together with these by Loudwire, Revolver, and the Heavy Music Awards.

It stays one in every of France’s largest rock bands of all time.

About Gojira’s activism

As if being internationally famend rock gods wasn’t sufficient, Gojira does large work towards inequality and injustice. Lately, they’ve fought to guard the Amazonian rainforests, cease elephant slaughter, and promote consciousness for local weather change, amongst their quite a few causes, as proven on the band’s web site.

Joe Duplantier touched on the group’s activism when selling Gojira’s 2021 Billboard-topping album, Fortitude, in an interview with Guitar.com.

“Rock is the music of riot; it has all of the parts,” he stated. “It’s acquired to have one thing that may make you suppose, one thing that may activate you. If it doesn’t, the phrases that come out, the music that comes out, it’s only a noise.”

Joe added he wished to be “a part of an answer” on this world “as an alternative of being a part of the issue.”

The band has fundraised for the combat towards HIV/AIDS, Greenpeace, and sea conservation, amongst different causes.  They proceed to take their activism with them as they proceed touring the usA. in September 2024 with American band Korn, in accordance with their web site.