"This is where I spent the last year of my life—in this room." Joe Duplantier is angling his laptop screen to give Revolver a mini-tour of Silver Cord Studio via Skype. As Gojira's vocalist and guitarist, Duplantier and his brother Mario—Gojira's drummer—began building Silver Cord in Queens, New York in 2014. They finished it just in time to record Gojira's sixth and latest album, Magma. As Duplantier sees it, having his own studio is just the next logical step in maintaining total control over the band's music. "Since we started 20 years ago, we've never stopped doing things ourselves," he says. "We tried working in other studios, working with producers and other people, but it's not for us. We need to do things ourselves."
In that spirit, Duplantier decided to produce Magma himself. It wasn't a huge leap: He's helmed a few of Gojira's prior albums—with exceptions like 2001's Terra Incognita and 2012's L'Enfant Sauvage. "I almost consider myself more of a producer than a musician," he explains. "I have a vision of how everything should sound, and I want to build it myself. It's like cooking, you know? When you cook something yourself, it's special. That doesn't mean it's gonna be better than in the restaurant, but you know exactly what you're eating."
The Duplantier brothers experienced some major life changes during the recording of Magma. On the positive side, they both became fathers. On the negative side, their mother succumbed to cancer. "Whatever happens to us, whatever's hard, we recycle it into creativity," the vocalist offers. And this includes the title of Magma, as their mother's side of the family hails from the volcanic Azores islands. "Pain or sadness becomes energy. So the worst thing in the world—and that was the worst thing in the world for us—becomes fuel and creativity. But there's more to this record than losing our mom. It's our next musical and spiritual step."
If there's one song on Magma that completely embodies the sense of upheaval that permeates the record, it might be "The Cell." When Revolver suggests that the lyrics seem like they're written from the perspective of someone who's completely overwhelmed by their circumstances, Duplantier nods enthusiastically. "Yeah, absolutely," he agrees. "I feel overwhelmed most of the time. But I see that in other people, too. A lot of people feel overwhelmed by their fears, by their everyday lives, by their jobs, by their families. Technology is moving so fast [that] it's difficult to comprehend the impact on your spirit and on our bodies and on our brains. So that song is not just about iPhones and computers, but about a time where everything went out of control."
And Duplantier will be the first to admit that he's as addicted to technology as anyone. "Like most people, I'm never too far away from my phone or my computer," he says. "When something happens onstage at our shows, everyone is grabbing their phone to capture the moment. But capturing the moment with your phone is really lame compared to capturing the moment in your soul. But I have that reflex, too. When my children do something special, I want to film it. Somehow I have to fight that. So 'The Cell' is a prison cell, but it's also the smallest particle that defines the body. It's the essence of what we are, but it's also where we can lock ourselves up."
Yet he's less eager to discuss "Stranded," the first single from Magma, which features the line, "You kill me face down, dead." He concedes, however, that it is directed at a specific person in his life. "I don't know if I want to talk about that—it's too personal," he laughs uncomfortably. "But it has to do with communication. When you want to talk to someone who is important to you, but this person is locking the door to communication, and you feel stranded. That's the idea."
But if there's a group of people that Duplantier isn't having trouble talking with, it's his bandmates. That Gojira is comprised of the same four members—the Duplantiers plus bassist Jean-Michel Labadie and guitarist Christian Andreu—almost two decades into the band's existence makes them a modern-day rarity. But the vocalist says there are three reasons why he thinks they've managed to stick together for so long. "First of all, I think we got lucky to find each other. Our personalities fit together pretty well," he offers. "Second, we don't do drugs. A lot of times when someone is going too deep into alcohol or cocaine, it creates a disturbance in the band and it's really difficult to come back to normal. The third reason is communication. If someone doesn't feel good about something, we talk about it. We're real brothers."
The members of Gojira grew up in the French countryside, but the frontman moved to New York on a permanent basis when they began work on L'Enfant Sauvage in late 2011. During that time, he and Mario collected scraps of debris from the streets of Brooklyn and used them as impromptu percussion instruments on the album. The idea was that you could actually hear pieces of New York City. Likewise, on Magma, the slight rattling sound at the end of songs is the subways's L train permeating the walls of Silver Cord. And now that Duplantier has been here for a few years, the city has deeply infiltrated him personally. "Living in New York is a real struggle," he says. "It's expensive; it's brutal. The winters are so cold and the people are tough. They don't give a shit who you are: 'You're in a band? I was in a band once. Who cares?' And if you've been here less than 10 years, you're not considered a real New Yorker. I like that, though. So of course, it oriented the songs in a certain way."
But Duplantier is in a very different position today than he was when L'Enfant Sauvage was recorded. Since then, he and his wife have had two children. Their daughter is four; their son will be two in June. "When you have kids, your life is changing so much," he enthuses. "You find love in you that you didn't even know you had. You receive surprises every day, and it's incredible. But at the same time, it's very difficult because someone is depending on you all the time. They look at me and my wife like we're gods, and we have full power. We can teach them whatever we want. It's amazing."
Unsurprisingly, the Duplantier children seem to be getting an excellent musical education. "I play music for them that I think is inspiring," Joe says. "Billie Holiday, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson—and metal, too. They really love metal, actually. My daughter calls it 'loud music.' One day she said, 'Daddy, can you play loud music?' So I turned up whatever was playing, but that's not what she meant. She meant metal!"
Of course, the kids know that daddy plays "loud music" for a living. "My daughter came on tour with my wife a couple of times and saw us play," Duplantier explains. "But kids love everything. They don't judge. They don't have an opinion like grownups. They're just like, 'This is what it is.' She can't imagine that a dad is not in a rock band. For her, it's a normal thing."
Family life has understandably changed Duplantier's outlook on touring. "When I have to be gone more than three weeks, it starts to get really difficult, and it hurts," he acknowledges. "I wasn't around when my daughter walked for the first time, or for my son's first birthday. When he [first] walked I wasn't around, either. I was in a different time zone, but it's almost like I was on a different planet. I was in my bunk on the bus somewhere in the world and my wife called me to tell me our son walked. I was happy, but I was also so sad at the same time. And the kids always wonder where I am. It's very, very difficult."
Luckily, the frontman can rely on his bandmates for support. "We're very close to each other," he says. "We all take the band very seriously. We all work very hard, and we all love and respect each other a lot. And that feeling is becoming stronger over the years. Maybe we'll end up becoming as one, and they'll put us in the same casket when we die." He laughs at his own joke for a second before becoming serious again. "We're like family."
