A Day At The GRAMMY AWARDS With GOJIRA: French TV Report

On February 12, French daily current affairs show "Quotidien", which is broadcast on the TMC channel (part of prominent media group TF1),spent a day with GOJIRA when the band was in Los Angeles to attend this year's Grammy Awards. The group was nominated in two categories at the event: "Best Metal Performance" for the song "Silvera", and "Best Rock Album" for "Magma".

You can now watch the "Quotidien" report below (with French subtitles).

GOJIRA frontman Joseph Duplantier told the AFP news agency about being nominated for a Grammy: "We started playing pretty intense thrash and death metal and I've been mostly growling for the last twenty years, so I wasn't expecting any kind of award. I never even thought of the concept of being nominated for the Grammys."

He added that the Grammy nods would not affect GOJIRA's musical and lyrical approach on the eventual follow-up to "Magma", which was a more commercially viable effort than the band's previous releases.

"We're super excited and surprised, but it's not like God telling you you're good and the others are not good," he said. "It's the Grammys."

METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett recently praised GOJIRA, saying that they were "the best thing I've heard in a long time. I love their new album," he said. "I think it's an incredible piece of art. It's heavy, it's vibey, it's moody. It has all the things you want to hear — great complex rhythms, great drumming, great riffs, great songs."

"Magma" was released last June via Roadrunner Records. The follow-up to 2012's "L'Enfant Sauvage" was recorded at Joseph's Silver Cord Studio in Queens, New York.

Asked what the title of GOJIRA's new album, "Magma", means to him, Joseph told Kerrang!: "To me, 'magma' is the primal energy. It's the blood of the earth. It's hot. It's dangerous. It is the guts. It's this music. It's the music we play. It's fusion. It's fire. It's electricity. It's… everything that we're trying to express with this music. That's what it means to me, 'magma.'"

Joseph also talked about how he comes up with all those heavy GOJIRA riffs. He said: "I don't know if we have a formula or a secret to write some of our riffs. But I wanna say that we connect ourselves to a certain energy, we put ourselves in a certain state of mind naturally. The kind of music we wanna hear, the kind of riffs we wanna hear are intricate and heavy and spiritual and there's a part of mystery in it. So we put ourselves in this kind of state of mind. But, really, we have visions when we play. When I've got my guitar, I'm already in a certain mood, and then everything that comes out will be in that specific mood. Yeah, I guess we're really connected to all… everything that's nature… Ideas like infinity, outer space, black holes [are] very inspiring for heavy riffs."

Photo courtesy of GOJIRA's Facebook page