PLEASE ALLOW ME TO COUNT THE WAYS IN WHICH I LOVE GOJIRA

I love metal, and I love the environment. So when I read a rant by the frontman of one of the most brutal, crushing bands in existence extolling the merits of environmentalism I got a little stiffy in my pants. It’s well-publicized that Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier is an outspoken environmentalist, but this excerpt from a recent interview with Zero Tolerance Magazine sealed the deal for me that Duplantier is a member of the true, not-saying-this-shit-to-be-trendy camp:

“I feel… terrified and very sad about what’s happening on earth right now,” he says. “I feel deeply — and I’m not the only one, a lot of people and everyone in the band agrees — I really mean it, it’s not to be trendy or whatever, because it’s true. We are destroying a lot of things, we are killing endangered species — we are killing sharks, we are killing whales and that’s an aberration to me. I cannot help it, when I get in the practice room and we play this music that is so powerful and stuff, I start screaming about it, I cannot help it.

We truly feel concerned and we hope that if the band gets bigger we can do more concrete things, raise money for a cause — we already give money to Greenpeace, but that’s a personal thing. We try to do our best not to waste water or gas or electricity, we try to be more conscious of what’s happening on earth. We are concerned, that’s a fact. Even if the main message of the band is more about the soul or the mysteries of life in general or what happens in the afterlife or our inner fears — to know ourselves better — that’s the message of the band. But we are citizens of earth, so we have to talk about that in our songs. I don’t want to sound clichéd, but we have to protect what we have. It’s more than important, it’s crucial.”

I have a totally non-gay crush on this man. Oh, and his band just happens to make some of the most forward-thinking and original metal this side of Mars. The band’s new record The Way Of All Flesh drops on October 14th in the U.S. (October 14th in the rest of the world), and having heard it in its entirety, let me tell you… fans of 2005’s ground-breaking From Mars to Sirius are going to be extremely, extremely satisfied with the new record.

-VN