GOJIRA Frontman Talks About Making Of New Album

HailsAndHorns.com recently conducted an interview with guitarist/vocalist Joseph Duplantier of French progressive metallers GOJIRA. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

HailsAndHorns.com: You guys took a lengthy break after touring heavily with METALLICA and LAMB OF GOD. Do you guys feel more relaxed and prepared to write a new album, [with it] having been three years since your last release?

Duplantier: Yeah. We need a certain kind of atmosphere to write music. We aren't really able to while we are on tour. It's tiring; we're concentrated on the shows, which really doesn't make it easy to write. And we're with the whole technical team, so it's really not the best writing environment. So we definitely needed some time. We took about eight months off with a few shows in between, but we really succeeded in creating the perfect environment for the recording.

HailsAndHorns.com: In terms of the album itself, how is that going so far?

Duplantier: Everything's going great. Usually we do it all really ourselves in our own place. When we do it at home, we have a lot of mistake and we have to play catch-up with ourselves sometimes. But with this new studio and [co-producer] Josh [Wilbur, LAMB OF GOD], there really aren't any errors made on the technical level and we do everything really one step at a time. We just finished the drum part and I'm really happy with how they turned out. I really think that it's the best drum sound we've ever had until now.

HailsAndHorns.com: Was the writing process different at all compared to "The Way Of All Flesh"?

Duplantier: Yeah. On "The Way Of All Flesh" we had just finished all of our tours and it kind of felt like we had to pull this album out of thin air. So we hurried ourselves a little bit for the writing of "The Way Of All Flesh". It was basically just Mario [Duplantier, drums] and I who worked on everything on the computers and it was only the two of us because the others (guitarist Christian Andreu and bassist Jean-Michel Labadie) had other things to take care of. So we pushed things a little bit but for this album since we've had more time, we were really able to do things as a band. We jammed together a lot. We'd have entire sessions of nothing but jamming, and it was the best way for us to compose. It really gives it a band energy that will really be felt throughout the album.

HailsAndHorns.com: I know that you guys like to experiment with sounds that don't necessarily come from instruments. What sort of wild and crazy objects have you guys been using for the new album?

Duplantier: So, we actually used a door. We like using acoustic sounds, natural sounds that don't come from our drums or guitars. It not really a concept, we just like to send the listener on an auditory trip. When people listen to the album, we want to create a journey and with this album using the door, that's actually the front door to the studio, is a big metallic door that sounds in the staircase that brings up to the studio. We spent a long time experimenting with the door, we banged a lot on it and we put different instrumental sounds over it. It almost sounds like it was a sound generated by a computer because it has a real metallic sound, but it's really 100 percent real.

HailsAndHorns.com: [Last] month you guys signed with Roadrunner Records. Are you happy with the new label?

Duplantier: Yes, we're very happy. As of yet, it's still a little early because it's all still pretty new. But we're gonna get to see the work done with the promotion and distribution since everything so far that has to do with composition, we've done it all ourselves as usual. But we're very happy to be working with Roadrunner; it's filled with very passionate people, the people who are recruited are really metalheads. There are, of course, a few commercial-minded people as with any label, but there are some people who worked on the first albums of SEPULTURA and DEATH, so yeah, we're definitely happy. It's a good place for us to be.

Read the entire interview from HailsAndHorns.com.