Gojira’s Joe Duplantier Reveals Greta Van Fleet Fandom – New Album ‘Blew My Mind’

As the year winds down, music fans and bands are starting to reflect on the best of the year that was and Gojira's Joe Duplantier has revealed his love for Greta Van Fleet's early 2021 album, The Battle at Garden's Gate.

Greta Van Fleet arrived on the music scene with a lot of fanfare, initially earning praise but also receiving a significant amount of backlash over the similarities in sound to iconic '70s rockers Led Zeppelin. Still in their early 20s, the sibling rockers (and drummer/friend Danny Wagner) emerged earlier this year with a more well rounded sophomore set, The Battle at Garden's Gate, and Duplantier has revealed his love of the new record.

Speaking with Revolver sharing several of his picks for the year, the Gojira frontman stated, "There's another album that blew my mind, and I heard about them as being a rip-off of Led Zeppelin, it's Greta Van Fleet's The Battle at Garden's Gate."

"I think these kids are very talented — I hate calling them kids, by the way, because it shows how old I am," adds Duplantier. "Seeing a bunch of 20-year-old's grabbing vintage instruments and fucking laying it down like they do, like in the good ol' days. You can say they sound like Led Zep or this or that, it doesn't matter to me. I have more faith in humanity when I hear that. I'm like, 'Yes, some things are not lost.' That album is absolutely amazing."

While still displaying some of their classic rock influences, The Battle at Garden's Gate showed an overall musical growth and added to their catalog with such standouts as "Heat Above," "My Way, Soon," "Age of Machine" and "Broken Bells." The album arrived at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart.

Duplantier also shouted out friends and onetime tourmates Mastodon for their newly released Hushed and Grim album and credited bassist Jean-Michel Labie for turning him onto Urne's Serpent and Spirit album.

Gojira also had a pretty outstanding year, promoting their stellar Fortitude album which continued to push their musical boundaries. Highlights included "Born for One Thing," "Amazonia," "Into the Storm" and "The Chant." The band will return to road for a European trek in January. See their dates here.