Hosts: Neil & Chris
Duration: ~55 minutes
Release: 29 July 2024
This week in The Monster Shop, Neil and Chris head to France by way of outer space to dive into Gojira's towering 2016 album Magma. Sparked by the band's appearance at the Olympic opening ceremony, they pivoted the schedule at the last minute, stuck the record on repeat and promptly fell down a rabbit hole of chugging riffs, odd time signatures and environmental grief.
They unpack why Gojira feel both crushing and strangely calming, from the Duplantier brothers' shared musical language to the way the band blend death metal weight with prog detail and almost post-metal atmosphere. Along the way, they talk about Gojira's eco-conscious ethos, veganism and activism, and how the band manage to sing about the planet, mortality and loss without sounding preachy or sanctimonious.
The spotlight lands on “Stranded,” whose opening riff the lads declare close to what the Voyager golden record should have carried as the definition of metal. They pick apart the harmonic squeals and Digitech Whammy pedal swoops that cut through the mix without ever turning into harsh dissonance, and how the song's groove manages to be both lurching and immediately headbangable.
They also spend time with tracks like “The Cell” and the title track “Magma,” listening for those subtle time changes, reversed snare and kick accents and hypnotic drum patterns that feel more like group meditation than showy prog. Production notes touch on the thick but clear guitar tone, earthy drum ambience and the way Joe Duplantier's vocals sit between a roar and a chant, carrying grief and resolve in equal measure.
Magma is a modern metal landmark, not because it is the heaviest thing Gojira have ever done, but because it shows how much emotional weight and nuance you can pack into riffs that still absolutely flatten a room. By zooming in on the band's discipline, shared language and refusal to treat the drummer as a human click track, Neil and Chris show how intentional repetition and detail can turn extreme music into something almost spiritual.
For anyone who has ever written off metal as mindless aggression, this episode makes a compelling case that bands like Gojira are closer to contemporary classical ensembles than cartoon villains, using volume, texture and rhythm to talk about grief, the earth and what it means to keep creating together for decades.
Perfect for: Listeners who want their heaviness served with thoughtfulness, fans of Tesseract, Architects or Sepultura-era groove looking for their next obsession, or anyone who watched the Olympics and thought, “Who on earth are this French band setting everything on fire?”