Christian Andreu was born on November 15, 1976. He became a founding guitarist of Gojira in 1996, when the French band was called Godzilla. His role changed as the group developed: he contributed compositions to its early albums, then became an enthusiastic interpreter of music increasingly written by the Duplantier brothers. His accounts of that shift offer a revealing look at how the band worked together.
Metallica supplied an early spark. In a 2009 interview with Radio Metal, Andreu identified …And Justice for All as the album associated with his discovery of metal. The connection extended to the instrument itself. Recalling his teenage years in a 2026 statement for Jackson, he said seeing Kirk Hammett play a Rhoads guitar at 15 had hooked him on its shape. That image would eventually lead to an instrument bearing Andreu’s own name.
Gojira’s first three studio albums were Terra Incognita in 2001, The Link in 2003 and From Mars to Sirius in 2005. Speaking to French Metal in 2015, Andreu said he had contributed compositions to those albums, while guitarist and vocalist Joe Duplantier and drummer Mario Duplantier had become the principal writers. He also described keeping some of his own ideas aside because they leaned more toward rock.
By The Way of All Flesh, released in 2008, Andreu was describing the results with particular excitement. He told Radio Metal that Joe and Mario had handled more of the composition, giving him a listener’s perspective on what they had created. “And I’m the biggest fan!” he said. Bassist Jean-Michel Labadie explained that he and Andreu encountered the brothers’ recordings when it was time to play their instruments on the material. They could hear the songs with some of the surprise an audience would bring to them, before taking on the job of performing them.
That job demanded preparation. In the French Metal interview, Andreu described rehearsals as a way for the musicians to connect, with new riffs played together and worked over. Before shows, they warmed up for an hour. Once onstage, he said, the concentration could resemble meditation: attention went into the playing itself. His description makes the preparation behind those performances easier to picture.
His attachment to the Rhoads shape also became a professional collaboration. At the 2016 NAMM show, Jackson presented USA and RRXT versions of his signature guitar, nicknamed The Dragon. The teenager who had admired Hammett’s instrument had become a guitarist with his own signature versions of that design.
In 2018, Andreu joined Gojira for a filmed performance of “Global Warming” at Silver Cord Studio in New York. The song closed From Mars to Sirius, but the band explained that they had struggled to fit it into a concert set, both because it was challenging to play and because of its emotional weight. They wanted to perform it for fans on camera, giving the piece room outside the demands of a full show. Gojira released the studio performance in June 2018.
