Joe Duplantier was born on October 19, 1976. As Gojira’s vocalist, guitarist and a principal songwriter, he developed a working partnership with his younger brother, drummer Mario Duplantier, that extended from writing songs to building their own recording space. “Silvera,” from the band’s 2016 album Magma, emerged from that studio during sessions profoundly affected by the death of their mother.
Duplantier’s first guitar belonged to his mother: a battered classical instrument with just two strings. He told Performer in 2013 that he spent hours trying to get sounds out of it, initially assuming guitar was much harder to play than it proved to be on a functioning instrument. Piano lessons had already introduced him to music, although practicing between lessons held little appeal. His parents encouraged his interest even when a musical career seemed impractical elsewhere. “When your parents back you up, it helps a lot,” he said.
The brothers formed Gojira in southwestern France in 1996. Duplantier’s American mother and French upbringing informed his outlook, while Metallica and Sepultura helped establish English as his natural language for metal. In the Performer interview, he also described English as a way to communicate the band’s ideas beyond France.
Those ideas became central to 2005’s From Mars to Sirius, which connected an interest in whales and the natural world with questions about humanity’s place on Earth. Duplantier was also learning how to translate the band’s playing into a record. Recalling the sessions for Guitar World in 2025, he described working at the mixing desk with sound engineer Laurent Etchemendy and bassist Jean-Michel Labadie. They studied records by Metallica, Morbid Angel and Fear Factory, then experimented with guitar placement, equalization and reverb. Without formal training in mixing, Duplantier made choices he later considered unconventional, but those decisions helped distinguish the finished album.
His interest in recording eventually became a construction project. Before Magma, Duplantier spent six months converting a Queens warehouse into Silver Cord Studio. He explained to MusicRadar that expensive studio bookings repeatedly consumed the band’s recording advances. Investing in equipment and a permanent workspace would give them somewhere to create beyond a single album’s sessions. The work involved buying building materials and constructing the facility through the cold.
Recording had barely begun when their mother became seriously ill. Joe and Mario returned to France, where she died in July 2015. Resuming the album meant confronting that loss while they worked. In their 2016 Metal Hammer interview, the brothers described recording through tears and finding both grief and joy in the songs. Mario connected the title Magma to emotions building beneath the surface, waiting to erupt.
Joe also reconsidered how much guitar the recordings needed. He told MusicRadar that he wanted listeners to hear the strings and pick attack, limiting layers and adding a quieter Telecaster part beneath his Charvel in choruses. A DigiTech Whammy pedal supplied another tool on “Stranded” and “Only Pain,” extending the sounds he had previously made through playing techniques.
The brothers’ collaboration reached a different setting on July 26, 2024, when Gojira performed from the balconies of the Conciergerie during the Paris Olympics opening ceremony. Working with composer Victor Le Masne and mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti, they adapted the French Revolutionary song “Ah! Ça ira!” for a production combining metal, opera and pyrotechnics. The resulting collaboration, “Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!),” won Best Metal Performance at the 2025 Grammy Awards, with Gojira, Viotti and Le Masne sharing the award.
