Band:	Gojira
Album:	Magma
Style:	Alternative metal, Progressive death metal
Release date:	June 17, 2016
Guest review by:	musclassia

01. The Shooting Star
02. Silvera
03. The Cell
04. Stranded
05. Yellow Stone
06. Magma
07. Pray
08. Only Pain
09. Low Lands
10. Liberation

Across their career thus far, and most notably on From Mars To Sirius and The Way Of All Flesh, Gojira have developed a reputation for playing an intensely heavy, percussive, and groovy brand of progressive metal, relentless yet hooky with ambitious, often lengthy songwriting. Whilst a sizeable number of bands have at some point in their career softened and/or streamlined their approach to develop a more widely accessible sound, for a band so renowned for their heaviness and, to a lesser degree, complexity, as Gojira, toning down those aspects of their sound could be considered a real risk. However, with 2016's Magma, they deliver an album that is by no means soft or simple, but which is a clear sonic departure from the likes of "Backbone" and "The Art Of Dying" from previous albums. How has this decision paid off for them? Well, in this humble reviewer's opinion, while this album doesn't rival the aforementioned albums as the band's best work, there are more than enough positive and interesting things about the new approach for it to avoid being classified as a failure.

The first thing to state is that overall, this is still easily recognisable as the Gojira of the past decade; the likes of "Silvera" and "The Cell" still feature the punchy, crunching riffs, energetic drumming and snarling harsh vocals that have come to characterize a large portion of the band's sound. However, the proportions have shifted; whilst those elements generally dominated previous efforts, here they account for approximately half of the overall runtime (and even within these moments the intensity often doesn't quite level up to that seen in the past; for example "Stranded"'s mid-tempo chug compared to "Vacuity"'s stomp). Instead, a sizeable amount of the listening time is spent with dense, muted, sinisterly imposing riffs, often patiently building up and shifting whilst gradually progressing towards some form of climax. Although "The Shooting Star" never quite explodes during its trudging, suffocating march, slowly adding extra layers without ever totally letting rip, on the other hand "Pray", the title track, and "Low Lands" all steadily work their way towards some degree of metallic crunch.

In these foreboding stretches the album does some of its best work; all four songs just mentioned manage to captivate during these more muted sections, particularly "Low Lands", a song that spends 4 minutes simmering in a mix of quiet, bouncy riffs, driving percussion, and foggy vocals, sounding like it could ignite at any moment yet taking its time to enjoy the journey. Additionally, these songs, as well as others on the album, show a real patience in the band's sound; whilst on several occasions previously they would cram a number of different riffs and segments into one song in rapid time (think "Adoration For None" or "Pain Is A Master"), here they are very open to working with one or two riffs at a time , draining all the emotional potential from them before moving on, similar to the intro of "Flying Whales" or the outro to "In The Wilderness".

However, whilst I enjoy these aspects of Magma, overall I feel it doesn't manage to be quite as compelling as past material. Certainly, there are songs here I fully enjoy; "Silvera" and "The Cell" are both very effective, hooky, punchy numbers, and "The Shooting Star" and "Magma" offer up a very compelling sense of brooding. Nonetheless, considering their pedigree, I feel the heavier portions of the album are surprisingly unexciting. "Low Lands", for all its effective progression, ultimately resolves in a slightly underwhelming climax, whilst "Only Pain" harkens back to L'enfant Sauvage, but even with that album's mixed reception, I feel it would be considered one of the weaker songs if included on its tracklist. Furthermore, although rather catchy and moderately enjoyable, I feel like "Stranded" fails to fully match up to similar songs from the band's past. Add into the equation the utterly redundant closer "Liberation", a sloppy mix of directionless sitar and uninspiring drums, and what remains is a likeable and effective package, but one with weaker aspects that are both more obvious and more common than I'm used to finding on a Gojira album.