Author: Primož Novak
Location: Roncade/New Age/Italy
Concert date: 07.06.2016
Ticket price: €26
Catching the French sensation Gojira for a club show anywhere near Slovenia has been truly hard in recent years. The band mostly pops up at festivals and in the US. But by pure chance, they ended up at the New Age club in the small Italian town of Roncade near Treviso, playing one of their rare non-festival shows. That automatically meant a longer set and, of course, a smaller crowd, which usually doesn’t exactly motivate big bands, so they tend to get their shows over with quickly and on autopilot. That’s more or less what you’d expect from Gojira too.
But before Gojira hit the stage, the warm-up was handled by Italy’s Bleed Someone Dry, who served the small crowd their take on deathcore, leaning toward a more technical approach. There wasn’t any great excitement about the band, though. People preferred to cool off outside with a beer.
At ten o’clock it was time for the eagerly awaited French heavyweights. After a short atmospheric intro, the band exploded with Toxic Garbage Island. The crowd went into a frenzy from the very first bars, mosh pits kept opening up one after another, and Gojira relentlessly carried on with the crushing L’Enfant Sauvage and The Heaviest Matter of Universe. Next up was the promotion of the new album Magma, which hasn’t officially been released yet. First came the heavy, ass-kicking Silver, then Stranded, which calmed the atmosphere down just a little. The new stuff went over well in any case. The crowd was moving and took to Stranded, a slightly more commercial-leaning song, more than well, so the new album’s potential really showed. In no time at all, Gojira showed off incredible tightness, and their stamina doesn’t fall short either. The energy is simply unbelievable, and drummer Mario Duplantier is especially admirable, playing with extreme precision and power at the same time. With the next song, Flying Whales, the heat only kept rising, and there was even a circle pit, which you wouldn’t have expected given how small the hall was. They also dipped into older material, like Wisdom Comes and Clone. Many considered The Art of Dying the highlight, today one of the band’s most acclaimed songs thanks to its mix of complexity and epic scale. The ending of that song was an absolute treat for fans of broken rhythmic patterns. Gojira served up the closing breakdown of Remembrance, which even Meshuggah would bow down to. They sensibly calmed the tension with Terra Inc., then hit hard again with Explosia, and wrapped up with the special Oroborus, which isn’t brutal in nature but is rhythmically very interesting, especially because of the choppy tapping riff the band likes to use. For the encore, they changed the song’s structure a bit and added a different outro. A short break followed.
There’s not much to complain about with the show itself: the band played with confidence and nothing about it felt routine. The sound deserves praise too. It was very good for a hall like this, which made the show that much more enjoyable. The songs were connected in interesting ways, sometimes even without announcements, using instrumental interludes, which made the whole thing more interesting and varied. Vocalist/guitarist Joe Duplantier held up well despite the heat, even though he had trouble with the microphone and his voice gave out now and then, but that didn’t spoil the overall impression. After a few minutes, Mario Duplantier was the first to come back, and with his drum solo he showed once again that he can play fast and complex. Of course, he’s also partly to blame for Gojira being so popular, because without his sense of groove and technicality they probably wouldn’t have become so well known. After Mario’s solo, the band hit us with Clone, which thrilled the older fans, and closed with Vacuity, which boasts morbid sludgy moves and a strong chorus the crowd sang loudly, followed by a switch into an aggressive section with blast beats, where the crowd found the last of its strength to move. After 70 minutes, the band sadly said goodbye. But they delivered an outstanding show.
Nobody would have expected Gojira to play to a small crowd today with the same energy and confidence as in front of a huge festival audience. Definitely a band that doesn’t hold anything back and shows up in the best possible light.
*Photos from the concert were contributed by Marko Engelman.
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