We started the tour in Nashville and did 15 or 16 shows. It was probably the best phone call of my life. Their management had called Joe to say that they wanted Gojira to open on their upcoming tour. “Mario…Metallica has invited us to the U.S.” “Joe, this is huge!”Īround one month after that – and I remember that day very precisely – Joe called me. According to James and Robert, we’re their favorite band at the moment.” They hung out for a bit and had a good connection. My brother was shaking, but he tried to stay respectful and polite and not behave like a fan. We grew up with Metallica, and the band is so important to our identity that it’s basically the ‘why’ behind Gojira. “You guys are my favorite band right now.” They went back to the dressing room where Robert introduced him to James Hetfield. “Would you be comfortable playing on this kind of stage?” It was set up in the middle of the venue so the crowd could surround it on all sides, and it could rotate. “I want to show you something.” Robert took Joe onto the huge, empty stage. “Thank you so much, Robert!” Joe replied. When my brother entered the room, Robert Trujillo interrupted his conversation, turned his head, and said, “You’re Joe from Gojira! I love you guys. After the show, he was invited into the dressing room and saw the band surrounded by VIPs and guests. My brother and I were so excited: Metallica wants us to see them! We hugged each other and we couldn’t believe it. In 2009, we received the news that Metallica wanted to meet us at their upcoming tour date in Paris, at Bercy, one of the biggest indoor venues in town. And two months after that, James told Kerrang that Gojira was his favorite band at the moment and that he loved our album The Way Of All Flesh.įinally, they’d noticed us. After the show, someone told us that James Hetfield was in the crowd watching us. We were invited to play a festival in France that Metallica was also playing. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but Robert started listening to our album From Mars To Sirius and shared it with James Hetfield, who also loved it. One day my brother said, “We should do a Metallica cover and maybe Metallica will see it.” So we recorded “The Call Of Ktulu” from Ride The Lightning, put it on our website, and someone from Metallica’s fan club in France sent it to their bass player, Robert Trujillo. We became well known in France, then England, then the U.S., and we started touring internationally. We all started playing music because of them, we all had Metallica shirts, and we used to joke that we’d be “the next Metallica”, which we thought was funny because it sounds so pretentious.
When we met the other two guys (Christian and Jean-Michel), our shared passion was Metallica. Joe and I started Gojira when I was 14 years old. My goal in life was to become Lars Ulrich. I wanted to be shirtless on stage being a showman, exactly like that. We watched the live concert footage, I saw Lars’ white TAMA drums, and I knew I wanted to be like him. And when my brother got a Metallica box set for Christmas, we really went crazy. When my mother bought me my first drum kit, I started to cover Metallica songs. And I don’t know what I was hearing in the drumming – whether it was Lars’ playing or the songs themselves – but I just wanted to play drums. Me headbanging while listening to Metallica with my brother, JoeĪfter that, my brother and I were all about Metallica. Then I listened to another song, and another one, and I finally fell in love with the band. I was so moved by this song, I was addicted to it. When we got home, he made a compilation of all the best Metallica songs and gave me a cassette. The emotion I felt when I heard this song – the bass, the guitar solo, the drums – for the first time, I understood the music.
One day we were on our way to the train station, and he put on “Orion” in the car. I’d say to him, “Please, Joe…it’s too loud, it’s too complicated, the screaming, I don’t like it.”īut he was constantly playing Metallica, even when we were in the car with our mother or when we were cooking with her. He wanted me to understand the music, but I always felt like it was too noisy. He started listening to the band when he was 16 and I was 11. But my big brother, Joe, was obsessed with Metallica. When I was a kid, I didn’t care about music at all.
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