Now wait a minute!

See these guys on the left? They played Roseland Thursday night, except for some reason they were never mentioned in the New York Times' review of the show. The very first sentence announced "a very strong triple bill"—Machine Head, Trivium and headliner Lamb of God. Poor, poor Gojira, who went on first and completed what actually was a very strong quadruple bill.

Reviewer Kelefa Sanneh also described "the most discordant moment of the night" as when the crowd responded to Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe's injunction to "Give it up for Trivium!" with a mix of applause and boos. But an equally discordant moment had happened earlier, when the French Quartet That Wasn't There was greeted with boos, raised middle fingers and shouts of "Fuck you, Frenchmen!"—I know, 'cause some of the eloquent meatheads were standing right next to me.

Gojira proceeded to shut those morons up with a blistering set played at top volume. (And the sound was crystal-clear, in contrast to Machine Head, which played equally loudly but with a muddled balance that made me feel as if the double kick drum was positioned right behind my eyeballs.) There's a reason Gojira was on the cover of Terrorizer a few months ago: Its latest album, From Mars to Sirius, is a massive slab of prog-death metal (with environmentally aware lyrics, natch), and live the band was pulverizingly heavy, like Mastodon without the dumb facial hair. Randy Blythe seemed to think so too: He joined Gojira onstage for half a song.

MP3 Gojira "Backbone" from From Mars to Sirius (2005)