L'ENFANT SAUVAGE

L'Enfant Sauvage might be the first time in Gojira's career in which they didn't really display any forward momentum, at least in regards to furthering and experimenting with their sound. It essentially plays out like a smorgasbord of their previous works, while also acting as a stylistic safety net after the technical musicianship and general darkness of The Way of All Flesh. The songs here are more concise, less expansive, and more conventionally written than in prior records. Is any of this a bad thing? Not necessarily. If anything, the album will be refreshing for new fans who are trying to get into this group's otherwise uncompromising body of work; at a much leaner 52 minutes (lean for Gojira, of course), it's also a nice entry point from a length standpoint as well. The album serves as a nice summary of the band's pre-Magma career? not stuffed to the brim with peaks, but not bogged down with many valleys either.

One listen to the opening cut "Explosia" and you know what L'Enfant Sauvage is going to be all about. Thick mechanical grooves, the group's signature pick-scrape technique, and a long melodic outro are what await you; they all fit nicely and lead to that certain blend of aggression and catharsis that Gojira excel at creating. Other songs that fall neatly into that category include the fantastic "The Gift of Guilt" and late-album highlight "Born in Winter". The former is quite close stylistically to The Way of All Flesh as it channels a lot of the same doomy vibes and foreboding melodies, and the result is a beautiful piece that's equal parts turbulent and poetic. The latter, meanwhile, might be one of the most experimental songs Gojira had done up to this point. The entire track is built around a framework of harmonically complex tapping and a soft ambiance, both of which make the eventual climax even more powerful than it otherwise would have been.

The members themselves are still going strong here in terms of both technical ability and chemistry. As per usual, Mario Duplantier remains the most impressive player in the group as he continues to experiment with interesting patterns and out-of-the-box ideas. Nothing he does on L'Enfant Sauvage is as ridiculous as the 45/16-time insanity he pulls on "The Art of Dying" off the previous album, but there are still some pretty cool moments here. Check out the amazing crescendoing bass rolls he does during the climax of "Explosia", or the crazy tempo changes that constantly keep "Planned Obsolescence" interesting. Joe Duplantier and Christian Andreu remain a tight unit on the guitar front as well, never really showing off but always serving the tight grooves nicely with their precise and heavy-as-hell riffs. The only person who gets a slightly raw deal here is Jean-Michel Labadie, whose bass playing is much less noticeable than on previous albums. It's not that he disappeared entirely, but I don't think it helps when the production is drowning him out a bit this time around.

The one element that drags this record below its immediate predecessors, however, lies in the songs that are just kinda? "there". To put it plainly, there are a handful of tracks here that don't elicit much of a reaction, the biggest examples being the title track and "The Axe". The former really doesn't deserve to bear the name of the album, as it just chugs along in a dull fashion with one-note riffs and a really boring bridge section. Joe sounds great vocally, but the music itself drags him down with its lack of creativity. "The Axe", however, doesn't go anywhere meaningful at all. The intense double bass-driven intro is promising, but it soon gets dragged into the mire of slow chugs and uninspired vocal passages. And unfortunately, it just stays at a slow burn without ever using any tonal or dynamic shifts to keep things interesting. It's a shame that these two songs are placed back-to-back, as it ruins the flow after such a powerful opener like "Explosia". And as I stated prior, the overarching sense of safety, while making the record consistent, also makes it duller than the band's previous outings. The feeling of "been there, done that" is pretty strong when listening to it.

Again, that still doesn't make it bad in the slightest. L'Enfant Sauvage is still a stellar record for the most part; it just needed a bit more adventurousness and diversity to spice it up a bit. Considering the two albums that followed, I think it's safe to say that this was a bit of a transitional album of sorts. It serves as the bridge between the group's more intense, technical offerings like From Mars to Sirius and the simpler, sparser arrangements of Magma and Fortitude; it's also arguably the band's most consistent album, which has to count for something. So at the end of the day, L'Enfant Sauvage is still an excellent piece of work and a great gateway album for people who are still on the fence about diving into Gojira's music for the first time. Trust me, it's worth it.