Album Review: Gojira - L’Enfant Sauvage

Back when they were both writing progressive extreme metal records, the metal world seemed to love drawing comparisons between Mastodon and French art-metal collective Gojira, but then Mastodon got signed to a major label and Crack The Skye happened and the comparisons between the two bands stopped.

Even if Gojira today sound nothing like their one-time contemporaries, the lingering similarities between the two bands are undeniable considering both bands have built their profile on the back of unique creative directions that amazingly captured the interests of mainstream metal audiences. L'Enfant Sauvage, Gojira's fifth record, finds them more intent than ever before on gaining the attention of those mainstream metal audiences, even if they have to sacrifice some of their more unusual creative proclivities.

Songs like The Axe and Mouth Of Kala exemplify an album structured to sound like a traditional thrash metal record, albeit one with as grand a scope as Machine Head's The Blackening and plenty of unusual riffs for fans of old. And if it weren't for the brilliance of the whacky genre excursions and twists and turns that typified 2009's The Way Of All Flesh, L'Enfant Sauvage would be a triumph. But where Gojira's previous record had them work with such a range of heavy music styles to create a tremendous pastiche, this one sounds like something they wrote to appease their rapidly expanding fanbase.

Even if Gojira have become more conventional as their success propels them towards mainstream metal, they're still doing things that are interesting and unusual. We'd be lucky if all mainstream metal bands demonstrated the innovation and creativity captured on L'Enfant Sauvage.