Thirteen years ago, Gojira announced they were releasing a special EP featuring guest spots by some of metal’s biggest names, including Devin Townsend, Randy Blythe, Anders Fridén, and Max Cavalera. It was set to light the world on fire, especially after the song “Of Blood and Salt” that featured Townsend and Meshuggah‘s Fredrik Thordendal saw the light of day. Sadly, that never came out as hard drive failures put the kibosh on the entire project.
During a recent interview with Kerrang!, frontman Joe Duplantier said the band previously tried to release the EP before they dropped Magma in 2016 and Fortitude back in 2021. Press engagements and other responsibilities leading up to those releases, however, got in the way. It led Duplantier to joke about the difficulties surrounding the EP’s release during the interview.
“The one track that we did bring out, ‘Of Blood And Salt’ featuring Devin Townsend and Fredrik Thordendal of Meshuggah, was great, but then it got buried – at first under technical issues, then under all of the other things we have going on. Some of it got lost; some of it needs rebuilding.
“Before we brought out [2016 album] Magma, we had a meeting and decided that it was something we wanted to release before the album, but the record label wanted us to release after so that it didn’t interfere with all of the expectation that was building. After the album came out, it turned out that we were so busy that we barely had time to catch up with life. You have to rehearse, you have to be ready for tour, you have so many interviews and obligations.
“Then the same thing happened during [2021 album] Fortitude. There are three more songs somewhere on a hard drive still to come out some day. I will release them before I die!”
We’ll see if this project ever gets released. Hard drive recovery efforts are possible these days in many cases, so who knows?