05MAGMA GOJIRA

(2016)

The sixth album from the French prog-metal pioneers marked something of a stylistic shift for Gojira. The band held back on some of the technical extravagances for which they’d become known in the past, including the normally ubiquitous ‘Gojira pick scrape’. The result was a more broadly accessible, emotionally exposed and sonically streamlined record. And even with differently nuanced sides of Joe Duplantier and Christian Andreu’s playing on display in atmospheric numbers like Lowlands and the acoustic closer Liberation, staples of the Gojira sound still abound, with plenty of tricky time signatures and earth-shaking riffs throughout.