GOJIRA Featured In 'Into The Machine' Documentary Series

French progressive metallers GOJIRA are featured in the new episode of FreqsTV's original "modern prog series" "Into The Machine". Brothers Joseph (guitar, vocals) and Mario Duplantier (drums) discuss their evolution as a band, the influence of Indian music on their songwriting and open up about how the loss of their mother is burned into the writing of latest album, "Magma", and the accompanying world tour.

Joseph told RockSverige.se last year that dealing with his mother's illness and eventual passing was an emotional experience that deeply affected the making of "Magma". "It was a long thing," he said. "It wasn't like she had an accident. It was long, pretty much one year of our lives. When we started to write the first riffs and songs, she wasn't sick, and then she got sick along the way when we were still kinda figuring out what we wanted to do. For a while, we thought she was gonna be fine, and then it changed. When she passed, it was… we knew she wasn't going to make it since a couple of months, so there were several stages, but we can't just analyze things coldly and, like, 'Okay, this album happened…' For us, it was like a gigantic storm in our lives and one of the biggest events in our lives like adults. It was a big lesson, a life lesson, the way she behaved through death with a lot of dignity and respect and beauty. It was amazing. We learned a lot from this whole experience. It influenced us and changed things in us. It's something we all have to face at some point, losing a loved one, and then eventually our own departure to another dimension. At the same time, we realized, 'Oh, wow, that's what people go through when they lose someone.'"

Added Mario: "Technically, when I started recording the drums, that's when things turned bad, so through the whole composing process, we thought it would be okay, so when we did 'Only Pain', 'Stranded', 'Shooting Star', we thought everything would be okay, but when we started recording…"

Continued Joseph: "We were hoping. She wasn't doomed yet, and then at some point it was, 'Okay, that's it.'"

Said Mario: "I remember calling her really often during the week, because we were in New York and she was in France, and every day we had a great conversation for one hour, and she said, 'Okay, go and practice and make a good album!' And she was just so full of light and full of… I don't know… we were just alive and going to practice and we worked together, because we are not kids anymore, we're not 20 years old anymore, and we have our lives, and sometimes we were just thinking about the music and what we wanted to hear and the texture of the sound and the vibration of the music and we were really in the present moment and not really thinking 'Ahhhhh!', so it's both."

"Magma" was released last June via Roadrunner Records. The follow-up to 2012's "L'Enfant Sauvage" was recorded at Joseph Duplantier's Silver Cord Studio in Queens, New York.