As you can imagine, I didn't really hugely look forward to seeing Gojira. Nevertheless, two great Polish death metal bands supported the Frenchmen in Stodola in Warsaw on August 25th 2010. Masachist kicked things off with their speedy and brutal assault. The band started off as a side project for Vader's previous drummer Daray and although I could not confirm that it was actually him behind the drumkit, his pummeling and hyper-fast drumming style is still what defines this band's sound. The band played well technically; however, their set was also somewhat lacking in dynamics and it was nearly impossible to distinguish one blast-beat heavy song from the next. It was all pretty exhausting so I soon decided to wonder around the venue a little bit only to notice that the audience was growing to fairly impressive numbers considering the kind of event that we're dealing with.
Lost Soul was up next and being a well-established formation with many years of experience, they were received much more enthusiastically than Masachist before them. Unfortunately, I found their music to be dissapointingly slow and not energetic enough. Perhaps Masachist should have actually played after them since it was tough to match the kind of intensity that 30 minutes of expertly performed blast-beats brings. With this said, I think I might have been one of the few people disappointed with Lost Soul as progressively more people gathered around the stage and were obviously having a good time. Either way, after about 45 minutes, Lost Sould left the stage and the main hall in the venue visibly began to fill up with people, probably well over 1000 of them.
Finally, Gojira emerged, began to play and truly surprised me very pleasantly. So yeah - I'm not a fan but I gotta tell you - Gojira is one fun band live. The energy of the show was just right and the setlist was very well crafted for the audience. I was very impressed with Gojira's regular excursions into pummeling death metal influenced sections where energy was at a very enjoyable high, no matter what one thinks about this particular band. The band also took the effort to communicate with the audience, wish Nergal a quick recovery and just generally offer a very good first impression. The guys from Gojira were also quite obviously very impressed with the plentiful Polish audience at the show and their enthusiasm was very visible as they were leaving the stage.
Here's their setlist:
1. Lizard Skin
2. Clone
3. Backbone
4. Indians
5. A Sight to Behold
6. The Art of Dying
7. Drum Solo
8. The Heaviest Matter of the Universe
9. Flying Whales
10. Toxic Garbage Island
11. Vacuity
Encore:
1. Love
2. Oroborus
All in all, I gotta say I was very pleasantly surprised by Gojira live. I still find their views annoying and I still won't be buying any of their albums; however, I will definitely not avoid any of their future live shows that I might have the opportunity to see.
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