Their appearance had a thunderous effect. Sandwiched between the more expected performances of Lady Gaga and Aya Nakamura, French metal band Gojira set the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games on fire on Friday, July 26.
Set up in the windows of the Conciergerie, the former courthouse and prison, almost suspended in mid-air, the four musicians, together with French-Swiss opera singer Marina Viotti, performed the French revolutionary song "Ah! Ça ira" in a fiery version, both literally and figuratively. Their energetic performance of the sans-culottes' anthem was launched by a guillotined Marie-Antoinette, whose last resting place was the Parisian building that had become a prison.
The quartet is one of the few French metal and rock bands to enjoy international success. Favored in particular by Slash, the legendary guitarist of Guns N' Roses, and Metallica, the sacred American metal monster group, Gojira is one of the heavyweights of this scene, dividing its time between France and the United States. The French band's world tours kick off in Los Angeles, California.
The choice of performance with Viotti was no accident. Before shining in classical music, the mezzo-soprano was a member of metal bands including Soulmaker and Lost Legacy. "I'm absolutely not looking to make a link between metal and [classical], they're two different worlds, which bring me different things, and which I certainly don't want to mix," she once told Guitare Live magazine, making her Paris Opera debut in 2023 as Stephano in Charles Gounod's Romeo and Juliet, directed by Thomas Jolly, artistic director of the Paris Olympics.
The connection between the two musical styles, which may seem so different, is an obvious one for the members of Gojira, especially brothers Joe and Mario Duplantier, the band's singer-guitarist and drummer respectively.
"Joe and I were introduced to classical music very early on," Mario Duplantier explained in an interview with Le Monde in June 2016." In our family, there was a love and understanding for this music. There's a very strong link between metal and classical music, through the solemn, serious side, but also the focus on existentialist subjects, life and death."
"Metal is more rooted in classical music, whereas rock comes more from the blues," added Joe Duplantier. "And, as musicians, metal also means a lot of rigor. Nothing is left to chance in metal, it's lacework," Mario Duplantier continued.
Like Brazilian metal giants Sepultura, to whom they have close ties, the members of Gojira insist in their lyrics on defending nature and its resources. "We grew up in the Landes [southwest France], we were always in the woods, on the beach, we've always been connected to the mystery and power of nature," Mario Duplantier confided to Agence France-Presse (AFP) in 2021. "From our childhood home, we hear the waves when they're big, (...) we're in tune with the ocean," he added, before his brother Joe, at his side, finished the sentence: "We join forces with the ocean to become, in our small way, its spokesperson."
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