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1.  Born for One Thing 
       2.  Amazonia 
       3.  Another World 
       4.  Hold On       
       5.  New Found
       6.  Fortitude
       7.  The Chant
       8.  Sphinx 
       9.  Into the Storm  
       10. The Trails  
       11. Grind
 

Gojira never seemed like a band built for the mainstream. A cult act,
yes, but in this century at least perhaps only Mastodon before them have
taken a strand of metal so obviously built for the underground and
dragged it kicking and screaming into the sunlight. It’s a long while
since Gojira could legitimately be called a death metal band, but
they’ve retained an uncompromising sense of self that has not always
been the most accessible. Dense, complex and oblique, they’ve
nevertheless hammered their way to the forefront of modern metal relying
on quality and sheer bloody-mindedness.

Fortitude sounds like the album that could propel them the rest of the
way to the top. They’re no strangers to melodies and hooks, but they’ve
never crafted anything quite like this before. Combining the
comparatively direct approach of The Way Of All Flesh with the more
expansive atmospherics of last album Magma then throwing in a few
complete curveballs, this is the most immediate yet surprising
full-length they’ve produced to date.

It’s still built around a solid steel core, with opener Born For One
Thing arriving on a slow build of taut dynamics. It also has that
stretched, echoing melody thing they do so well, but when the riffs
catch fire they’re truly vicious. Only two songs in the first departure
hits, as Amazonia addresses the devastation of deforestation via a
crunching groove peppered with indigenous instrumentation that’s
straight out of Sepultura?’s Roots-era playbook. ?“It’s very clearly a
tribute, nothing more!” frontman Joe told Kerrang!, but it’s an
excellent homage painted with a stripe of Duplantier DNA.

Follow-up Another World is more classic Gojira, with that drilling
technicality slicing through the middle, but it also has big sing-along
hooks that you could picture levelling an arena. Into The Storm is even
more anthemic, but it’s the set-piece double-act of Fortitude and The
Chant that head into new roof-raising territory. The title-track has a
campfire groove and the loosest vibe they’ve ever allowed themselves
while The Chant is a huge bluesy hymnal that the band describes as a
?‘healing ritual’. It proves you don’t have to unleash the heaviest
matter of the universe to have power and this is set to be a very
special moment when live shows and especially festivals are a thing
again.

Lyrically they’ve emerged from the introspection and meditations on
mortality that characterised Magma, turning back out to the world around
them. Gojira have always addressed environmental themes and they return
to them here. Despite the fact that mankind appears to be lurching
towards disaster, though, the overall feeling is not despondency, or
even rage. Instead there’s a sense of hope and positivity – an
invocation of the power that still resides in both the individual and
the collective as the planet faces an existential crisis.

This is an important album, not only because it extends Gojira’s palette
and cements their place as one of metal’s most skilled and
uncompromising bands. They’re also one of the most inspiring as they
call for strength, for action and above all for fortitude. Hang in
there, and Gojira will be right beside you.