{"id":6078,"date":"2012-06-26T00:00:26","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T00:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=6078"},"modified":"2013-06-01T14:22:59","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T14:22:59","slug":"album-review-gojira-lenfant-sauvage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-gojira-lenfant-sauvage\/","title":{"rendered":"GOJIRA – L\u2019Enfant Sauvage (2012) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

GOJIRA
L\u2019Enfant Sauvage<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nRoadrunner (2012)<\/span>
Rating: 9\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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While I have seen Gojira live a few times and have heard bits and pieces of their prior albums, L\u2019Enfant Sauvage<\/em> is my first experience with a complete Gojira thought. And let me tell you, these French guys have a lot of thoughts! This album is a giant wall of sound that reminds me almost immediately of powerful sounding bands like Down, Mastodon, early Strapping Young Lad, more recent In Flames and Lamb of God (albeit to a lesser degree). L\u2019Enfant Sauvage<\/em> is just a really thick slab of metal that has every bit the progressive nature of Mastodon and twice the energy.<\/p>\n

The album opens with the nearly seven minute \u2018Explosia\u2019. This opening would kill a lesser band in a heartbeat. It\u2019s long, abrasive and completely overpowering. It\u2019s practically impossible not to be sucked into it by the 90-second mark to be honest, and that surprises no one more than myself (who detests both intros and extremely long songs)! Everything about this song hits perfectly from the trippy vocals to the spiralling echoes of the guitars.<\/p>\n

The title track reveals itself next with a strong punch that fades into an almost nineties alternative rock sensibility. \u2018The Axe\u2019, \u2018Mouth Of Kala\u2019 and \u2018Liquid Fire\u2019 continue to reinforce this band\u2019s established identity. The high end bass work of \u2018Born in Winter\u2019 elevates the album a couple of more notches. While it\u2019s a melancholic offering, it\u2019s also a very thick one that again brings to mind Strapping Young Lad\u2019s Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing<\/em> (1995) and City<\/em> (1997) albums. <\/p>\n

\u2018The Wild Healer\u2019 stops everything mid-album with its completely wrong yet completely amazing guitar work. I dare say it\u2019s unlike anything else out there. It\u2019s a short track and, in a way, a bridge of sorts but it\u2019s also easily my favourite track on the album. \u2018The Gift Of Guilt\u2019 is another song that finds the band shifting gears. It\u2019s got the extraordinary guitar playing that you are expecting by this point and a nice bounce that pulls you straight down into the rabbit hole before snuffing you out with its heavy riffage. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure exactly how this compares to previous albums, but I do know that L\u2019Enfant Sauvage<\/em> will greatly excite any fan of heavy music. There\u2019s a ton of nu-metal and stoner metal influence here, but if you listen closely enough you\u2019ll also hear a ton of really progressive pieces as well. They really kind of blend everything that\u2019s cool (which isn\u2019t much) about the late 90s and the new millennium into one entirely new thing. If I had to sit through all the crap that came out during those years just to get to this album, it\u2019d be totally worth it. Gojira are damn near perfect here. <\/p>\n

Mark Fisher<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GOJIRAL\u2019Enfant Sauvage Roadrunner (2012)Rating: 9\/10 While I have seen Gojira live a few times and have heard bits and pieces of their prior albums, L\u2019Enfant Sauvage is my first experience with a complete Gojira thought. And let me tell you, these French guys have a lot of thoughts! This album is a giant wall of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,299],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-gojira"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6078"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12018,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6078\/revisions\/12018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}