On his latest episode of ‘Drinks With Johnny,’ Avenged Sevenfold bassist Johnny Christ recently shared his thoughts on Gojira’s surprise performance at last month’s Olympic Games opening ceremony.
“I was in the other room and I heard metal being played, I was, like, ‘What the f*ck?’,” the bassist shared his reaction. “I walk out and I see this amazing performance happening on the parliament house or whatever castle that was. And I’m, like, ‘Wait a minute. That’s f*cking Gojira. I know those guys. That’s f*cking Gojira right there.’ And I was very happy for them. I was, like, ‘That’s f*cking cool.’ And then, of course, 30 seconds later, I was, like, ‘Why the f*ck haven’t I been up there doing anything like that yet?’ F*ck, dude. I’m moving to France. F*ck this.”
“It was so cool,” Christ said of the performance. “And they did a cool job of — it didn’t feel like it was, ‘Oh, now we’re just gonna go to metal and it’s gonna feel completely out of place at the rest of the ceremony.’ No, they still kept it. And with them hanging off the side of it, getting that shot, showing everything, going to the different windows and stuff, I thought it was really well done.”
Gojira took the stage with a cover of ‘Ah! Ça Ira.’ They were joined by opera singer Marina Viotti and some beheaded figures representing Queen Marie Antoinette.
The performance caused some controversy online. Christians called it ‘satanic,’ and Andrew Tate criticized the West for supposedly ‘worshipping the devil.’
“Satanists control the west and they show you that they worship the devil. It’s not a conspiracy theory,” he wrote in a post. “They literally show you. Are you blind?”
He added in another post: “I’m genuinely enraged by this Olympic opening. These evil scum have absolutely zero respect. They mock us so openly. When will people WAKE UP.”
Joe Duplantier later responded to Tate’s claims.
“It’s none of that. It’s French history” he explained. “It’s French charm, you know, beheaded people, red wine, and blood all over the place — it’s romantic, it’s normal. There’s nothing satanic.”
“France is a country that made a separation between the state and religion during the revolution,” the frontman added about the meaning of the song. “And it’s something very important, very dear to the foundation of republican France. We call it laïcité. It’s when the state is not religious anymore, so therefore it’s free in terms of expression and symbolism. It’s all about history and facts. We don’t look too close closely at symbolism in terms of religion.”
After their performance at the Olympics, Gojira’s monthly Spotify listeners shot up from 1.8 million to 2.7 million in just a week. Now, three weeks later, they have reached 3.1 million monthly listeners.