GOJIRA: Entire 'Magma' Album Available For Streaming

"Magma", the new studio album from French progressive metallers GOJIRA, can be streamed in its entirety in the YouTube playlist below. Released today (Friday, June 17) via Roadrunner Records, the follow-up to 2012's "L'Enfant Sauvage" was recorded at GOJIRA frontman Joseph Duplantier's Silver Cord Studio in Queens, New York.

"Magma" track listing:

01. The Shooting Star
02. Silvera
03. The Cell
04. Stranded
05. Yellow Stone
06. Magma
07. Pray
08. Only Pain
09. Low Lands
10. Liberation

The cover artwork for "Magma" can be seen below

Joseph told RollingStone.com that GOJIRA worked on twelve songs for the album before ultimately deciding on ten. "We want a short album," he said. "Something less epic than what we usually do. People's attentions are shorter now. So a lot of the songs are four minutes."

Joseph and his brother, GOJIRA drummer Mario Duplantier, who make up the band's songwriting core, were forced to put the sessions for the new album on hold when their mother got sick and eventually died last summer.

"I felt physically, mentally exhausted," Joseph told RollingStone.com. "At the same time, though, the way it happened was beautiful. We were all around her. We had to cancel a few shows when she died, but it was very enriching at the same time. We learned a lot about death."

"When you read Joe's lyrics, for me, I cry right away," Mario said. "They're very deep and to the point. No bullshit. We recycle our sadness and depression in the music."

"Mario was recording drums, and I was playing guitar with him, just trying to help him know where he's at in the song, and both of us would start crying at the same time," Joseph added.

"The songs were half-written while she was sick," he said. "After she died, I still had to finish them. So one song was like, 'You're going to make it,' but the second verse is 'You didn't make it.'"

Asked what the title of GOJIRA's new album, "Magma", means to him, Joseph Duplantier 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."