GHOST, Gojira, The Defiled @Academy Birmingham 23/3/13

With the awful, unseasonable weather robbing Hawk Eyes of the chance to open this show (and as an aside it struck me as odd that the different opening acts for this Jagermeister sponsored jaunt weren’t local anyway – its not as if we don’t have plenty of decent acts) it is left to The Defiled to kick the evening off.

The band are ones RTM has seen on a numerous occasions as they criss-cross the UK opening for anybody and it doesn’t matter how many times we see them, it always takes a while to get over the fact they look like some dirty version of the Black Veil Brides.

Strip away the image, though, and what there actually is a very good metal band. And one that, evidently, is going places. Their new album has been produced in Florida by Jason Suecof (Trivium, Job For A Cowboy) and is coming out on renowned metal label Nuclear Blast. They premier a track from it this evening in “Sleeper” and it sounds huge. It sits alongside older material like “The Ressurectionists” and the still catchy as hell “Call To Arms” and as always, The Defiled leave with some new fans.

It is something of a shock to RTM that Gojira aren’t headlining this shindig. The French titans have been to this country enough over the last 12 months (this is the third time we’ve seen them) to build up a pretty big fanbase. They played the venue next door last June and sold it out, before a rammed show in Wolverhampton in November. A proper international metal act, they have no problems in a 50 minute support slot tonight.

Of course, it helps that Gojira are, to be frank, brilliant. The act is well-honed. The band all racing around the stage during in second number “Flying Whales”, just as they have twice before, they give an airing to the aptly named “Heaviest Matter In The Universe” and play a magnificent version of the title track of their most recent record “L’Enfant Sauvage.” Quite fantastic.

It is however Ghost (or Ghost BC) if we were in America) that are the closing band tonight. They have a stage set that befits the occasion – and their ludicrous nature – as they mock up a church and the crowd to be far adores them over the course of the next 75 minutes.

For us, though, it is a joke that is wearing a trifle thin. We saw them back in December 2011 way down a Metal Hammer bill at the Wolves Civic Hall and for half an hour they were spellbinding. After this we got the album and (whisper this quietly because everyone seems to love them) we thought it was a little bit dull.

And that is exactly how we feel about them tonight. The eight songs they play from that debut album “Opus Eponymous” are good, but -  “Ritual” aside – RTM genuinely can’t see what the fuss is about. Bands like Merciful Fate were doing this type of thing better 20 odd years ago and, this is our first listen to the five new tracks and honestly, none of them grabbed too hard.

That is not to say that Ghost aren’t enjoyable, they are big dumb fun, but if we ever hanker for a band that doesn’t reveal either its face or its name, then we will reach for the first four Kiss album and the first two Slipknot records, which are genuinely exciting.

The organisers of this gig deserve great credit, the £5 entry fee is astonishingly good value, but for our money – and we are in a minority of one -  the wrong band headlined. 

GOJIRA, Trepalium @Wolverhampton Slade Rooms 12/11/12

France’s Trepalium are looking uncomfortable on the tiny Slade Rooms stage. Not their performance, you understand, which was a superb display of thrash and death metal, with touch of jazz thrown in. It is just that they have a massive drum kit and the five of them look ready to fall off the edge at a moments notice.

Thankfully, no one does go arse over tit and we are left to enjoy the show. RTM wasn’t familiar with the band previously, but they were extremely impressive. “Sick Murder Boogie” is aptly named, and if their finishing song is called “Usual Crap,” the group themselves are anything but. They offer something original and exciting.

As do their countrymen Gojira. They are really riding on the crest of a wave at the moment. This is their biggest UK tour to date and this year’s “L’Enfant Savauge” album is quite marvelous. In addition their show earlier in the year at the Academy was one of the gigs of 2012. This one doesn’t quite match that, but it was pretty damn close.

It is with “Explosia,” a track from “L’Enfant….” That they begin, and in common with all their songs, it seems it is built around a gigantic riff from Joel Duplantier and the driving rhythm of his brother Mario on drums. The band headbang their way through it and it is a jaw-dropping opener.

Like the set in June this is a career spanning affair, rather than focusing on one album, and soon they are attacking “Flying Whales” like their lives depended on it. 2008’s album “The Way Of All Flesh” is well represented – “Oroborus” sounding particularly impressive - while “Toxic Garbage Island” is perhaps the best song ever written about environmental issues.

The fact that Gojira choose to write songs about the planet rather war like some of their extreme metal contemporaries neatly sums them up. They are a serious rather than good-time group. This is exemplified by their attitude to the crowd surfer who nearly hurts himself near the end. Where bands like Down encourage such behaviour, Duplantier tells the crowd not to do it before he gets his head down to get on with his job.

The set ends with “Vacuity” before an encore of “The Gift Of Guilt” brings things to a brutal close. At that point you are left to reflect on how Gojira have done this in an old school way.

Coming from France – hardly a metal hotbed – must have been a disadvantage, but through a string of great albums and the hard work of touring with everyone they can, they can headline 10 shows in Britain and nearly sell them out – and do that twice in a year. But then quality usually rises to the top and Gojira are one of the best bands in extreme metal right now.

GOJIRA, The Safety Fire, Frantic Empire @Academy 2 26/6/12

It’s hot in the Academy 2 tonight. Very hot in fact. And it’s packed. The show is all but sold out, but it makes for a decent atmosphere. Also rather than the usual turn-up-just-the-main-band attitude, the crowd are here early.

Wolverhampton thrashers Frantic Empire find themselves are the main beneficiaries of this and are able, this evening, to strut their stuff to hundreds of people.

Actually, calling them thrashers is a little simplistic, given that they are not ever going to part of the thrash revival as such, but rather they take thrash as a starting point and add something a little more contemporary, so that they are almost a trad-metal take on groove metal. “Lords Lie” ticks the right boxes and they are very much worth checking out.

The Safety Fire have been garnering rave reviews recently for their debut full-length effort “Grind The Ocean” and its easy to see why the metal press is liking them so much. Billing themselves as Prog Metal, they are definitely from the Periphery/Djent end of the genre rather than the Dream Theater/Symphony X one.

The fantastically named Sean McWeeney on vocals is the bands star turn, while the twin guitar-guitar duo Dez Nagle and Joaquin Ardiles come to the fore on tracks like “Circassian Beauties.” The band end their brief half hour set with catchy single “Huge Hammers” and appear set fair to be headlining venues like this themselves in the near future.

French titans Gojira’s rise to doing just that has been largely due to the fact they have excellent songs rather being part of a “scene”. Perhaps the world was slow to catch on at first – and lets be honest France hardly trips off the tongue when thinking of metal hotbeds -   but that is definitely not the case any longer.

If the 2008 album “The Way of All Flesh” was good, then “L’Enfant Savauge” – released this very week - is even better and the band are rising fast. Indeed they arrive on stage and rip through “Space Time” from their first album as Gojira, "Terra Incognita", as if they eager to captailise on their new found fame.

The 70-minute set is pretty much evenly divided from the aforementioned “…Incognita” and “….”Flesh” records, as well as three songs from the new album and a trio from the monstrously heavy “From Mars To Sirius” CD and showcases the bands prodigious abilities both as songwriters and musicians.

Led by the Duplantier brothers – Joe on vocals and Mario on drums – the band is riding on the crest of a creative wave right now. New tracks “Explosia” and “The Axe” are fine affairs sitting easily alongside set closer “Vacuity” one of the stand out moments on “The Way of All Flesh.” They are soon back for an encore with puts together “Toxic Garbage Island” together with current single and new albums title track.

The band, who are greeted like heroes throughout, seem genuinely touched at the reception and promise to be back before Christmas to play more new songs.

When they do, if its anything like as good as this it will be one of the gigs of the year, because tonight Gojira were truly remarkable.