Gojira‘s landmark performance of “Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!)” at the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympic Games late last month introduced the acclaimed French progressive metal band to millions of potential new fans, while also serving as a big step forward for the representation of the genre of metal as a whole.
That elaborately staged performance found Gojira playing from ledges suspended on the windows of the Conciergerie Palace in Paris, France. The group were paired with mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti amid a backdrop of macabre imagery of France’s revolutionary history.
Composer Victor Le Masne, who served as the musical director for the aforementioned games, also worked on this track. While broadcast rights and such seem to keep the video of the performance itself under relative regional copyright lock and key, audio of the collaboration has now officially been released across digital service providers and can be heard below.
Gojira vocalist/guitarist Joe Duplantier previously spoke at length at how the opportunity came about, telling Rolling Stone last month:
“We very simply and organically came up with riffs and grooves that we like to play. We took it as an opportunity to represent the metal scene. So it was our task to really go for it and lay it down, not just be there and play a few notes to shock people. We decided to go full-on with double-kick drums, screaming, growling, epic moments, and a tempo breakdown at the end; we really wanted to show what metal is all about. And to our surprise, it was all accepted by the committee.
But they gave us some guidelines and things that were mandatory, for example, saying ‘Ah! Ça Ira’ which I ended up saying three times in the song. It’s rare for me to sing in French in Gojira. So it was a bit of a challenge. I was the one pushing to put some English in the middle of the song to make it more international.”
