Video footage available of Gojira performing with a different lineup

Thursday night, November 27, at Reims Arena in Reims, France, French progressive metallers Gojira began a tour of their native country, as reported by blabbermouth.net. You may watch a fan-shot video of the performance below. Joseph Duplantier, the guitarist and vocalist for Gojira, just had “minor surgery” on his right hand, which prevented him from playing the guitar during the journey. Due to his injury, he and his bandmates have engaged Greg Kubacki from the New York-based mathcore group Car Bomb to play guitar for Gojira throughout the tour, which ends in Strasbourg on December 12.

Setlist:

1. Only Pain
2. The Axe
3. Backbone
4. Stranded
5. The Cell
6. Wisdom Comes (first performance since 2017)
7. Flying Whales
8. From The Sky
9. Another World
10. Silvera
11. Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça Ira!) ([traditional] cover)
12. Born In Winter (live debut)
13. Born For One Thing
14. The Chant
15. Amazonia
16. L’enfant Sauvage
17. Where Dragons Dwell / To Sirius / Ocean Planet / In The Wilderness (“From Mars to Sirius” medley)
18. Global Warming (live debut)

Gojira tends to operate in polar extremes. “I can’t help but see humanity as a parasite,” Gojira’s co-founding guitarist and principal songwriter Joe Duplantier explains, “and yet the most beautiful things come out of humans.” To that end, the French quartet—Duplantier and his brother Mario [drums], Christian Andreu [guitar], and Jean-Michel Labadie [bass]—have spent the past 15 years translating this duality into a distinctive sound: dark, crushing metal brightened by triumphant arena-rock melodies, contrast-heavy and emotionally charged.

Enter 2016’s “Magma”, whereupon Gojira found strength—and crossover success—through a singular commitment to self-reflection. The intensely personal record, penned in memory of the Duplantier brothers’ late mother, was a painful significant turning point for the French group. It debuted at No. 24 on the Billboard 200 chart, topped the Billboard “Hard Rock Albums” chart (a first for a French band), and netted nominations for Best Rock Album and Best Metal Performance (for “Silvera“) at the 59th annual Grammy Awards. Numerous global headlining tours, including a stint with Metallica, followed. Coming out of “Magma”, Gojira weren’t just one of the biggest metal bands on the scene—they were one of biggest rock bands in the world, unified and self-emboldened.