Gojira - From Mars to Sirius

From Mars to Sirius is the album that turned Gojira from a French death metal band into an international concern. Released in 2005, it is a concept record about environmental collapse and spiritual transit, and it is where Joe Duplantier's pick-scrape guitar language and his brother Mario's polyrhythmic drumming finally locked into something no other band was doing.

"Flying Whales" is the song that did it, seven and a half minutes that open on ambient whale-song synths before the riff arrives like a wall coming down. It remains their most requested live track twenty years later. "The Heaviest Matter Of The Universe" is the most direct thing here, four minutes of pure groove. "Backbone" and "Ocean Planet" set the tone on side one, while "To Sirius" and the closing "Global Warming" push the record's ecological argument to its conclusion.

The band recorded and mixed it themselves with Laurentx Etxemendi, mastered at La Source, and the production is deliberately dry and enormous. There is very little studio gloss, which is why it has aged better than most metal albums of its era.

This Listenable Records repress presents the album as a double LP on limited edition beige vinyl in a gatefold sleeve, pressed in France. The Gojira album most fans start with.