It’s funny how things sometimes work out. Back in July 2024, Gojira together with opera singer Marina Viotti mounted a furious and pretty stellar metal attack based on the old revolutionary song Ah! Ca Ira! at the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics. RMR offered a few choice words not only for the outstanding performance of the musicians themselves but also for the often astonishingly disrespectful comments issued by the mainstream press and the somewhat creaky arrangement of the event.
Now much to this crew’s delight, Joe Duplantier‘s boyz, Viotti, and composer – Victor Le Masne – found themselves in the well-deserved number-one spot for Best Metal Performance of the 2025 Grammy Awards. Gojira blew the annual auto-nominated Metallica, Judas Priest, Spiritbox,1 and something called Knocked Loose neatly out of the water.
Gojira already got nominated for the Grammy Awards for rock2 and metal prizes a number of times but never made it to the top. I reckon the folks over at Metallica snatched it from them.3 But this time it worked perfectly.
So, congratulations are in order for one of France’s most prized metal bands and their concoction Mea Culpa (Ah! Ca Ira!). And the song’s undeniable success is yet again proof positive that opera-trained vocalists and rough-hewn metal work really well together.
Let’s have more of that real metal at the Grammy Awards in the future. Metallica are growing a bit stale over there.
Just sayin’.
The Odd Footnote!