Two minutes and thirty-six seconds of tease. That’s all this is. Just fragments of sound from the studio.

But it’s Gojira, so uh-huh, I’m sure as fuck gonna post the motherfucker.

I’m afraid I don’t have any new Gojira music for you today. The wait for the Sea Shepherd EP continues . . .

BUT, I do have new Gojira artwork for you. Today, the band made available for free download a pack of 5 wallpaper images, the first of which is up above. They are all cooooool.

You can download them by going to THIS PAGE.

After the jump, the rest of the wallpaper art . . . and an old Gojira song, because I really can’t be mentioning Gojira without music.

Gojira – Backbone – Sonisphère 2011 from KLIKON on Vimeo.

On July 8, 2011, Gojira played the Sonisphere festival at Snowhall Parc, Amnéville, France. A new video of the band performing “Backbone” (which is probably my favorite Gojira song) has just surfaced. It starts with the French version of the running of the bulls, and then the neck-snapping starts.

Prepare to BANG YO’ FUCKEN HEADS.

UPDATE: Jan Lavadome e-mailed me a link to another Gojira video that I’d never seen. It’s the band performing “Remembrance” in 2003 and comes off their Link Alive DVD (released in 2007). It kills. Especially the super-tight rhythmic assault from 3:26 to the end. Watch after the jump.

If you’re like your friends here at NCS, you occasionally wonder, “what the fuck is going on with Gojira’s Sea Shepherd EP?” Well, we spotted the following note posted by Gojira on the band’s Facebook page earlier today. Now you will know what we know:

“A lot happened since our last message so we wanted to give you some news today and let you know we are still alive! We know you are all eagerly awaiting the Sea Sheperd EP release. We are sorry for the delay. Some of the material was on a hard drive that crashed but we are nearing the end of a long and difficult recovery process. Now the Good news: the new Album is ready! All the music and lyrics are waiting to be recorded. Joe is already in NY to check out the Studio and make sure everything is sorted so we can begin to record next month. A new website is being built and we are working on ways to improve the communication between the band and our fans. You guys fucking rule! Thanks!”

Uh, well, okay, we’re trying to remain calm, but having some difficulty doing that, because that little tossed-in bit of “good news” is pretty fucken cool, ain’t it? Sort of compensates for the lateness of Sea Shepherd.

Above: Quality fan-filmed video footage of Gojira’s June 17 performance in front of 25,000 fans at the Sonisphere festival in Athens, Greece. Nothing more needs to be said.

June is behind us, July lies ahead. Here in the U.S., we’re about to start the long weekend leading up to Independence Day, when Americans celebrate the birth of the nation by buying explosive ordinance wherever fine explosive ordinance is sold and lighting up the night sky (in addition to blowing the shit out of objects and sometimes themselves). People will also be exposing unsightly parts of their bodies wherever sun can be found and eating large quantities of health food prepared on outdoor grills. Our Founding Fathers would be proud of what they wrought!

Because the last month has ended, that means it’s time for another installment of METAL IN THE FORGE, in which we collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, we cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

Remember — this isn’t a cumulative list. If we found out about a new album during May or preceding months, we wrote about them in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. And feel free to tell us about how we fucked up by omitting releases that we overlooked.

Thanks to Metal Injection and The Number of the Blog, both of whom just wrote about the following delectible pieces of news in posts I read almost simultaneously. Both of them were getting their info from an interview that Joe Duplantier of Gojira gave to Metal Hammer (which can be found here).

First, Devin Townsend and Fredrik Thordendal (Meshuggah) are not the only artists who will be making guest appearances on the new Gojira Sea Shepherd EP. Those two joined Gojira on the first single from the EP, “Of Blood and Salt”, which we featured here. In addition to them, Duplantier revealed to Metal Hammer that the EP will also include guest vocals by:

Randy Blythe (Lamb of God)
Anders Fridén (In Flames)
Max Cavalera (The Cavalera Conspiracy, ex-Sepultura)

Second, feast your eyes on this morsel from the Metal Hammer interview:  “The Sea Shepherd EP will be followed later in 2011 by the band’s brand new studio album (“We are still composing,” admits Duplantier, “but it will come out this year, I promise!”).”  After the jump, a few more excerpts from the Metal Hammer interview, including what Duplantier says about the music on the next album.

I’m in a hurry, so no words, other than to say my new hero (and occasional NCS writer) Siddharth Darbha just e-mailed me a link to this, which purports to be a new Gojira song from their long-awaited EP, The Sea Shepherd, and that it purports to include guest participation by Devin Townsend and Fredrik Thordendal (Meshuggah).  I have to go change my underoos now.

We have been anticipating The Devin Townsend Project’s new album Deconstruction for quite some time, but have been positively slobbering over the prospect since we found out the identities of the guests who will appear on the album (see the line-up, matched with the track list, here). Among those guests are Joe Duplantier, the vocalist and rhythm guitarist for the almighty Gojira, and Paul Masvidal, the vocalist and guitarist for Cynic. Both of them join DT and his bandmates on a song called “Sumeria”.

The modern musical world being what it is, Deconstruction has already leaked, which is a shame. And from leakage of the album to download sites, of course it will be a short step before the songs start to appear on YouTube for streaming. One already has. Guess which one.

Initially, “Sumeria” appeared as a track recorded off a broadcast by a Finnish radio station, with subpar sound quality and sounds of the DJ talking at the end. But now, some asshole has put the actual album track up for streaming, with album-quality sound (well, at least mp3 quality). So, of course, we completely ignored that, in protest of the leakage of what is likely to be an album-of-the-year candidate from one of the most creative metal artists working. That protest lasted about 60 seconds.

Having registered our protest by waiting 60 seconds, we listened to the song, and it’s stunning — a massive, complex, heavy, beautiful, many-layered creation that will take many listens before the contributions of all the parts become clear. But there is no mistaking Joe Duplantier’s contribution — there are passages in the song when those lumbering, instantly recognizable Gojira riffs begin to stomp and Duplantier’s instantly recognizable voice begins to proclaim the verses. Not that Devin Townsend stands in anyone’s shadow, but if you’ve been pining for a new Gojira song, there’s one lurking inside “Sumeria”.  And even though we really do think it’s a shame that this album has leaked, as responsible journalists reporting the news as it happens, we’re embedding that YouTube clip of “Sumeria” right after the jump.

No, we don’t have any new Gojira music, but we do have an update from the band. We don’t usually post about band updates, but this is Gojira — pretty much the consensus NCS pick for best current metal band in the world, so we are running this update right here, right now (from Gojira’s Facebook page):

“Hello Everybody

We are currently working on a live DVD with important bonus section : “The Way Of All Flesh From The Inside”, the Sea Shepherd EP, (a non profit operation with a lot of people involved is a bit complicated to wrap, but we’re getting there and we promise to release these songs soon). We’re also composing a new album! We’ve written pretty much half of it, and we are very excited by this new material. It’s a big step for us. These songs are original and a good reflection of what we are today.

We are so focused on these things, that sometimes we forget to communicate with you guys, but we’ll try to post more updates from now on.

Big thanks to all of you for your patience and support.

Cheers from the practice room!!!

Gojira”

That is all.