GOJIRA Drummer Talks Next Album In New Interview

Sam Maher of Metal Obsession recently conducted an interview with drummer Mario Duplantier of French progressive metallers GOJIRA. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Obsession: As I understand it you have a lot of stuff happening this year. You are supposed to be having an EP, an album and a live DVD all coming out in the near future, is that correct?

Mario Duplantier: Exactly, yep, that's correct. I don't know exactly the dates for the release of the three, but for sure in 2012 we have the three of those.

Metal Obsession: At what stage of completion are the different projects at?

Mario Duplantier: So right now we are finishing the voices in New York for the new album; it's almost done. The next step is mixing everything but the album is almost done; we just have three or four more songs with the voices to finish. For the DVD, we are, right now, just trying to fix everything together but everything is almost done. The DVD will be released with Mascot Records, it's not with Roadrunner…they are friends together, both labels, but the DVD will be released with Mascot. It's about how "The Way of All Flesh" was carried out, it's like a résumé for all this material we have for "The Way of All Flesh". For the ["Sea Shepherd"] EP we have to talk to Roadrunner to find a way to release it properly, but everything is on its way.

Metal Obsession: Why are you releasing both an album and an EP? Will they have significantly different styles?

Mario Duplantier: I think they are not the same. We recorded the EP with Logan Mader [SOULFLY, MACHINE HEAD] in Los Angeles, so the sound is very specific, it sounds like Logan Mader and it's a very interesting sound. But for the new album, we wanted something different, a new approach, so the sound is different and the intention is different. We really want to separate both because I think "Sea Shepherd" is a really specific sound, not like a real GOJIRA sound. In fact, we have some guests and we took a direction on the EP… it's perhaps more simple…I don't know, it's hard for me to explain. I don't know, maybe in the future we can release a bonus for "Sea Shepherd". We would have to talk to the record label about it.

Metal Obsession: Are you able to expand upon the style of the new releases? All of your albums have had a particular style about them, particularly "From Mars To Sirius" and "The Way of All Flesh". How has the sound evolved with this new album and new EP?

Mario Duplantier: With the new album, we wanted something more organic, more…like, when we play live, there is something very simple and sometimes we lose that in the studio. It's a rule, you know, a lot of bands have found this, in the studio maybe sometimes it's too clean, too perfect. On this album, we wanted a direction more like a live performance, something true where you can show the band, where you can feel the band live and we have tried to preserve some of that on the new album. For the "Sea Shepherd" EP…I don't know what the intention exactly was…it was do something with guests. How can I say…?! You know, I think it's very organic too. On the last album we were very inefficient about it, we put a lot of time just into the sound so our goal is to do something simple, powerful and organic.

Metal Obsession: What is the writing process like in GOJIRA? Is it everyone in a room jamming things out or is a lot of the writing done just by you and Joe [Duplantier, guitar/vocals]?

Mario Duplantier: For this album, we jammed with the four of us for months and months to create this album, but Joe and I compose things mostly. Personally, I've been very inspired in this period with tons of melodies and ideas for the songs. I was so inspired that for some songs I created the drums part first and Joe had some riff on it. For this album, I proposed a lot of dynamics, ideas, riffs and stories, I was on fire. [laughs] It's not for attention, but just at times I felt like I couldn't sleep, I was crazy I had all these ideas, I was drumming on these guitar riffs. Every day I went to the practice room and I said to Joe, "Hey, please try this riff on this pattern of drums," and he'd say, "Yeah, OK." We have this connection between he and I, very efficient, straight to the point. For this album it was like this.

Read the entire interview from Metal Obsession.