Terra Incognita

Personnel: Joe Duplantier (vocals, guitar); Christian Andreu (guitar); Mario Duplantier (drums).
Audio Mixer: Stephan Kraemer.
Audio Remasterer: Raphael Bovey.
Recording information: Impuls Studio, Belgium.
Photographer: Gabrielle Duplantier.
If you like Tool and/or Meshuggah, the Frenchmen in Gojira are gonna make you very happy. They also owe something to death metal and the "groove metal" sound of acts like Pantera and Lamb of God, but they've got a crispness and an impressive clarity to their crunching riffs that's all their own. The sound on 2009 album, TERRA INCOGNITA, is phenomenal, especially when one considers that it's their debut, recorded in 2000 when nobody had any idea who they were. They show exactly where they're heading, even if they hadn't quite shrugged off the influence of straight-ahead death metal as much as they will on the follow-up, 2003's THE LINK.