Gojira and Korn bring concert tour to Shoreline Amphitheater

It was Korn's party . But Gojira definitely stole the show.

Korn came to Shoreline Amphitheater on Sunday evening to celebrate a big anniversary.

“Tonight we celebrate 30 years of Korn” Singer Jonathan Davis he told the massive crowd of about 18,000 fans gathered at the Mountain View venue. “We had ups, we had downs. But that's life.

“Without all of you we wouldn’t be here. So thank you very much (expletive).

And thank you very much Gojira – who, by setting the table for Korn, provided by far the best reason to see the show on that sweltering evening. The concert was the start of a big week for hard rock/metal fans, with tremendous success Aftershock Festival are coming to Sacramento from October 10th to 13th (and are here Our selection of acts to watch ).

While the Bakersfield nu-metal headliners' offering could generously be described as “nostalgic” – and could probably be more bluntly described as dated – what Gojira put forward felt so very fresh and exciting and illustrated all the reasons why French quartet one of them is currently the best in the metal business.

Sure, the Bakersfield troupe has earned the right to make headlines by selling millions more records than France's Fantastic Four. However, by virtually all other metrics, Korn had no business following Gojira on the live stage.

And I suspect that we won't be seeing Gojira in the role of support act for much longer.

Gojira has operated outside the mainstream since its inception in the mid-'90s – only hardcore metalheads appreciated its charms – and sparked a major wake-up call to the rest of the world with its monster performance at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics last summer. The result was that millions of people were suddenly talking – and Googling – about the band.

Of course, this tour was booked well before the Olympics coming out party, otherwise Gojira's name could be at the top of the stage at major venues across North America in 2024. But now fans will have to wait a little longer for that to happen.

The band – consisting of Joe Duplantier on vocals and guitar, his brother Mario Duplantier on drums, Christian Andreu on guitar and Jean-Michel Labadie on bass – were absolutely masterful in their Shoreline performance, playing a dozen massive ones over the course of the course Metal songs through a fascinating hour.

Gojira opened the set with “Born for One Thing” and the band made it clear what that one thing is while continuing with powerful rockers like “The Axe,” “Backbone,” and “Stranded.”

The music moved like a Humvee doing donuts at an ice rink, making its way through the changes and obliterating everything in its path. Still, the Gojira sound is far from one-dimensional – check out Korn if you want some of that – but rather a complex and very hard-hitting mix of prog, groove and death metal forms.

Joe Duplantier can scream along with the best of them on the mic, but he's also the rare metal singer who brings nuanced moments and – dare I say it? – Familiarity with the music. It has a lot to do with the lyrics, which cover fantastical Ronnie James Dio-style tone and concepts of one's own mortality, but shine brightest when they take stock of the world we live in.

The group is considered one of the great environmentalists and conservationists in modern music, regularly tackling issues such as ocean pollution, climate change and deforestation through Joe Duplantier's passionate lyrics. This is incredibly refreshing in the metal world, especially in direct comparison to all the mind-numbing F-Bomb-for-F-Bomb's-sake lyrics that would follow with Korn.

This side of Gojira definitely came to light when the group dedicated the epic “Flying Whales” – from 2005’s From Mars to Sirius – to anti-whaling activist Paul Watson, currently held captive in Denmark. With perfect timing, an audience member seized the moment to toss up a large inflatable whale, which was then passed around over fans' heads throughout the song (and then some).

The Gojira stage show was just as immersive as the music, with lots of cool effects and enough (literally) firepower to make it seem like you were actually seeing the pyrotechnic Rammstein on stage.

The group ended their set with a harrowing rendition of “Amazonia” – from their latest album, 2021's Fortitude – which singer Duplantier dedicated to indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest and around the world.

Korn followed with an 18-song set of their own, which was certainly appreciated by the large crowd – but still seemed very disappointing after what we'd just seen with Gojira.

The sound system really boomed when the group took the stage with “Here to Stay,” with the bass turned up to an almost nauseating level, but the volume couldn’t hide the mediocrity of the material as the band continued with “Dead Bodies Everywhere.” “, “Got the Life” and “ADIDAS” (Speaking of Adidas, the musicians were basically billboards for the shoe/sportswear brand, proudly wearing the logo – with singer Davis performing in a very non-metallic red Adidas track suit, which, given the Weather made absolutely no sense.)