10 Bold Predictions For Heavy Metal In 2018
1. Gojira Will Become A Bona Fide Festival Headliner
Everybody seems to love Gojira. They’re a hard-hitting, hard-working provider of progressive perfection, manic death metal and headbang-inducing grooves. In turn, after their major breakthrough in 2012 with L’Enfant sauvage, the group’s live show began to receive rave reviews, citing their sheer energy, technical wizardry and all-killer-no-filler heaviness.
Come 2018, after the grooving simplicity of 2016’s monstrous Magma, Gojira are finally beginning to earn their rightful and well-deserved spot on top of festival bills. In August, the band are headlining the UK’s Bloodstock Festival in Catton Hall, Derbyshire, joining the ranks of Judas Priest and Nightwish in the process. This comes after the Duplaniter brothers et al totally decimated the very same site as a direct support to Mastodon just two years prior, blowing their headliner completely out of the water as they did so.
Gojira were announced for Bloodstock 2018 live at the festival a full year prior, being confirmed after Kreator played the main stage on Saturday, 12th August, 2017. The roar of approval that came with the announcement that these technical death metal juggernauts would be returning to Derbyshire at the top of the bill was one of the biggest the festival saw that year.
We can only hope that, once Gojira inevitably blow both minds and expectations at Bloodstock, this cements them as a bona fide, bankable festival headliner, giving them a springboard to dominate massive stages worldwide.