Gojira - Fortitude

Fortitude is the sound of a band that spent twenty years perfecting a very heavy machine and then decided to see what else it could do. Gojira's seventh album, released in 2021, keeps the pick-scrape squeals and seismic low end that made them famous, but builds them into songs that are shorter, hookier and more openly political than anything in their catalogue.

"Amazonia" is the centrepiece, a track written in response to the burning of the rainforest that pairs a droning berimbau-like figure with one of the band's most physical riffs. Proceeds from it went to Indigenous land rights work in Brazil. "Born For One Thing" opens the record on a Buddhist-inflected lyric about letting go of possessions. "Another World" and "The Chant" pull toward something almost meditative, and "Grind" closes the album with the heaviest four minutes on it.

Joe Duplantier produced and recorded most of it at the band's own Silver Cord Studio in Queens, Andy Wallace mixed, and Ted Jensen mastered at Sterling Sound. Mario Duplantier's drumming is the constant, tightly controlled and endlessly inventive without ever tipping into showboating.

This limited Roadrunner repress comes on opaque grey vinyl with heavy brown splatter and includes a lyric insert, pressed in the Czech Republic. A great-sounding pressing of Gojira's most accessible record.