“I'M PRETTY LIMITED WHEN IT COMES TO PLAYING SOLOS. BUT I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I'M DOING WHEN I PLAY A RIFF, WHICH IS CRUCIAL...”

Joe Duplantier is the mastermind who has made Gojira the most exciting metal band of the modern age. A self-taught guitarist who says, “I like to explore the instrument from a slightly different angle”, he tells TG about his new signature model and Gojira-branded plug-in, and discusses the creation of Fortitude – arguably the best metal album of 2021...

- Amit Sharma

No-one writes riffs quite like Joe Duplantier. The Gojira singer/guitarist knows how to inject his music with a sacred potency – and it’s precisely that Midas touch that has propelled the French quartet out of relative obscurity and into being one of the most important metal bands around today.

Few could have gotten away with the audacity of titling one of their tracks The Heaviest Matter Of The Universe, but in Gojira’s case, their bold claims were well justified. The tech-death ferocity heard on their early albums, most notably 2005 landmark From Mars To Sirius, made them champions of the underground, and soon after releasing their next album, 2008’s The Way Of All Flesh, they were hand-picked by Metallica as opening act for the World Magnetic Tour. On this year’s seventh album, Fortitude, they’ve continued with the head-caving directness introduced on its predecessor – more inspired by the rhythmic power of Sepultura and Tool than the brutal ferocity of pure death metal – and, once again, with stunning results.