Gojira - From Mars to Sirius

 Moving to higher places.

(Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on October 2nd 2020)  

From Mars To Sirius, as you may know, is the 3rd full-length release by French metal giants Gojira, and the one that catapulted them to the forefront of modern metal music, thanks to its unique sound and style, both of which to this day haven’t been emulated by many, if any other bands.

Album opener "Ocean Planet" starts off things in a somewhat calm manner during the first half of the track, where the heavy riffing is broken up by a more melodic passage, while the second leg kicks things up a notch with some heavy breakdowns, which help with maintaining the listener's attention, and enhance the somewhat melancholic mood of the song.

The following tracks, "Backbone" and "From The Sky", are 2 tracks that showcase Gojira's tendency to mix things up and not just groove with no end in sight. The former is one of the more aggressive tracks on the album, barely letting up throughout its entire duration, with some fast tremolo picking breaking up the grooving and chugging, along with a very nice buildup to a breakdown around the 3:26 mark. "From The Sky" on the other hand, while starting off with a very fast blast beat is a much more melodic affair, and makes use of pick scraping on its verse riff, along with some great double bass from Mario Duplantier, who plays some very interesting patterns between all the blast beats and breakdowns, and is without a doubt one of the album's highlights.

The album's midsection is home to some of the best songs the band has ever written, "The Heaviest Matter of the Universe" and "Flying Whales". Both tracks contrast well with each other, not only through their duration, with "Matter" being one of the shortest songs on the LP (discounting the interlude that is "Unicorn" and "From Mars", which I'll get to later), but also through their pacing, with the former of the two being much faster in pace and maintaining a sense of urgency during its runtime. "Flying Whales" on the other hand is nearly twice as long, and progressively builds up throughout its almost 8 minute runtime, with the first 2 and a half minutes of acoustic buildup that lead into the massive riff that the band hits us with, making for the greatest moment in their discography. From that point the song ebbs and flows until the end, where Joe's voice soars over the band exploding for the finale. In all honesty, I cannot imagine them ever writing a better song than this.

The album is then bookended by the couple of "From Mars/To Sirius"(FM/TS) (can't figure out for the life of me why they decided to have them be separate tracks) and "Global Warming". The first segment of FM/TS is a relaxed acoustic segment with Joe whispering and crooning over it, which then plays into "From Sirius", which is much heavier, with fast double bass underpinning some grooving riffs during the verses, a rather odd riff which appears around 0:40, and a nice stop-start section at 3:00, with the track fading away from 4:25 onward, setting the stage for the album's end. The final track is much more solemn in tone than the rest of the album, which can be felt through the main riff and the vocals, which for the most part are clean singing, rather than the usual throaty yell used through most of the tracks, which is mostly used to punctuate the end of each verse and lead into the more aggressive sections between verses. Another notable moment in the song is how the bass seems to be "singing" the final bars of the track right before Joe starts singing them, which wraps the whole experience up perfectly.

The vocals are a great positive on this album, since Joe Duplantier exhibits great variety on all the tracks here, from his usual throaty yell to his clean singing (From Mars, Global Warming), a mid-to-low range growl which he uses on some occasions, but his best moments are whenever his voice soars over the instrumentation, which is used on a lot of tracks, but not to the point where it feels like a crutch (From The Sky, Flying Whales).

Lyrically we have a concept album that on a surface level is about having an out of body experience and observing a planet being destroyed and reborn, but there are also some environmental undertones (if the title of the final song wasn't enough of a giveaway) and some of the lyrics can also be interpreted as someone's struggle with mental health, which can be seen on tracks such as "Ocean Planet" and "Flying Whales", which can be interpreted as allegories for depression.

The album as a whole doesn't have too many drawbacks, barring the fact that some songs like "Where Dragons Dwell" and "In The Wilderness" tend to drag on a little and would've been better off if they had a minute or so trimmed from their runtime. Another potential negative for some people might be the fact that the band tends to groove at a medium speed for the most part and doesn't play leads of any kind, although I think that the quality of said riffs and how they blend in with the drumming more than makes up for those two points.

The production is another point that might turn some people off the album because, while the instruments and vocals are nicely mixed and not struggling to be heard, barring the bass getting somewhat buried on occasion, it has a rather "industrial" sound to it, with the guitars specifically sounding like heavy machinery in terms of tone and weight, which might prove to be grating after a while for some people.

From Mars To Sirius is the result of a band that strove for greatness, and put together an album which, despite how divisive it might've been among metal music fans, has cemented itself as one of the most important albums of the century so far. As a result, I feel inclined to recommend it to every metal fan who has yet to listen to it.

Highlights: From The Sky, The Heaviest Matter of the Universe, Flying Whales, Global Warming

Rating: 92%