GOJIRA frontman
Joseph "Joe" Duplantier has told
BBC Radio 1's
"Rock Show With Daniel P. Carter" that he couldn't get into
SLAYER's music when he was initially exposed to it. "I remember the first time I heard [
SLAYER], it was too much for me — it was too fast, too evil… it was too
everything; it was too much," he explained. "And I was very intrigued by it. I'm, like, 'Why is it too much?' It's so evil — the notes, the tones, the playing, the drums, the solos, the vocals. There's something hard to explain about
SLAYER that makes it so evil.
"So I came back to
SLAYER years later," he continued. "When I was 18, 19, I was, like, 'Yeah!' My teenage years, being into
METALLICA, I was then into death metal. And then I was ready for
SLAYER — to go back and listen to
SLAYER.
'South Of Heaven' was a big thing for me."
This past January,
SLAYER announced that it would do one last concert tour around the globe to thank its fans for all of their support over the years.
SLAYER has been touring in support of its latest album,
"Repentless", which was released in September 2015 via
Nuclear Blast. That effort marked the band's first release since the death of
SLAYER's co-founding guitarist
Jeff Hanneman.
In August,
Duplantier confirmed to
Metal Injection that
GOJIRA has commenced the songwriting process for the follow-up to 2016's
"Magma" album.
"Magma" earned
GOJIRA its first-ever
Grammy nominations for "Best Metal Performance" and "Best Rock Album."
GOJIRA's crushing track
"Silvera" received a nomination for "Best Metal Performance", while
"Magma" was nominated for "Best Rock Album" at the awards.
In the summer of 2017,
GOJIRA was the support act on a number of North American dates on
METALLICA's
"WorldWired" tour.