Gojira - The Way of All Flesh (2008) Reviews

More advanced songwriting than The Link but more direct and in-your-face than From Mars To Sirius, The Way of All Flesh achieves what might be the perfectly fine-tuned balance of the Gojira sound.

Most of the songs here are truly great... crunching, grooving and churning underfoot with unstoppable metallic force, yet also rippling with an addictive sheen of primal melody... from the tremolo harmonies of "Esoteric Surgery" to the Joe Duplantier's hopeless wails on "A Sight To Behold". A couple mediocre tracks in the middle ("Adoration For None" in particular - thanks Blythey) hold it back from being the immersive opus its predecessor was, but there's no denying that a lot of fat has been trimmed from FMTS and that The Way of All Flesh has benefited as a result. The focus on straightforward, to-the-point metal songs that rip hard suits Gojira's burgeoning strength as catchy metal songwriters. Yet it's very clearly the same band that wrote FMTS and still falls under the umbrella of "Progressive Death Metal", for lack of a better term. Gojira sound like no one else in the game and that is their strongest asset. Artistic, refined and insanely re-playable with passionate lyrics, this is a release that keeps existing genres fans and newcomers alike intrigued!

Highlights: Toxic Garbage Island (best riff), A Sight To Behold (an arresting ethos on human destruction), The Art of Dying (dem drums), Esoteric Surgery (catchy), Vacuity (catchier)