Roadrunner Records – 2012 – France
ojira are France’s Heaviest Progressive band with members like Joe Duplantier (Guitar, Vocals), Jean-Michel Labadie (Bass), Christian Andreu (Guitar) and Mario Duplantier (Drums) the band will remain a French Metal landmark for a very long time. After 4 successful Full-Length albums {Terra Incognita (2001), The Link (2003), From Mars to Sirius (2005), The Way of All Flesh (2008)}, they’ve outdone themselves with 2012’s long awaited album “L’enfant Sauvage” which means The Wild Child.
This album is all about Anger, Guilt, Denial, Lie, Rebellious acts… in other words, The Wild Child. The album consists of 11 tracks.
The first track (Explosia) starts with some bone crushing heavy riffs and traumatizing guitar squeals they also had a great riff which amazed me, it sounds kind of like the 19th century cowboy shoot out in North America (you’ll come to know what I’m talking about once you listen to it).
L’enfant Sauvage’s the next track and the track turned to consist with some ferocious riffs which will make you want to listen to this track over and over again.
Now The Axe began with primordial tunes and jumped in with some pinch harmonics. Liquid Fire started off with the same pinch harmonics that ends The Axe but right after 40 seconds in the song the atmosphere builds up with anger, guilt… and those negative feeling which makes you feel extremely happy from the insides, if you get what I mean.
The Wild Healer is an instrumental track which I’m sure that I’ve heard it somewhere but with different tuning. The tuning was kind of Super Mario’s.
Planned Obsolescence is where Gojira unleashes their secret weapon “The percussive work of Mario Duplantier” which vaporizes some of your brain cells. The feel of those obscenely fast tempos was not present in this track, none the less in the entire album.
A track like Mouth of Kala is expected in every album they release, I mean the whole songs goes on with 2 riffs until the last 100 seconds where there was some riffs and breakdowns that you would fracture your skull to.
The Gift of Guilt is a gift to all the metal lovers. The fascinating part of this track is from 2:28 – 3:15, where between 3:06 and 3:12 the guitar squeals where out of this world. Actually the track is out of this world with all the feeling that Gojira put into this track is just phenomenal, excellent…
Pain Is a Master just starts off really calmly and in just 65 seconds the whole song turned upside down with some destructive riffs and grungy vocals that made me want to drink 10 gallons of beer and attack a Wild bear, the track had some hesitation to jump back to the primordial riffage in the end.
Born in Winter starts off really slow and chilled out until it hits 1:50 where the tone and effects of the guitars just amazes the hell out of you but sadly the song is too short.
The Fall sounded like the apocalypse where all the building have been destroyed, the skies grey, streets destroyed… at 1:58 the old school Gojira riffs kicks in and this how the album ends.
As it was said before, album after album. This album is excellent with impressive songwriting and they maintained their position as France’s Kings of Metal.
8.5/10
