STERLING HEIGHTS, MICHIGAN – MAY 23: Joe Duplantier of Gojira performs at Michigan Lottery … [+] Amphitheatre on May 23, 2022 in Sterling Heights, Michigan. (Photo by Scott Legato/Getty Images)
With the Paris Olympics less than 2024 hours away it’s recently been announced that the French metal outfit Gojira will be performing at the opening ceremony for the XXXIII Olympic Games. According to French local paper Le Parisien, Gojira will be performing with opera singer Marina Viotti as part of a collaborative performance tomorrow. Other announced artists performing at tomorrow’s ceremony include Lady Gaga, Aya Nakamura, and Celine Dion.
Despite Gojira not sharing the same world renown status as many of these other artists, tomorrow will cement them as the ever first metal band that’s performed at an Olympic Games opening ceremony.
It’s certainly a monumental moment for Gojira and extreme music altogether, provided the opening ceremony is one of the biggest and most televised events in the world. Approximately 300,000 people will be in attendance at the ceremony tomorrow with millions watching the event live from across the globe.
Only a select few number of rock acts have performed at the the Olympics in previous years, and none of these acts could even be partially categorized under the metal or extreme music sub-genre. Rock bands and musicians that have performed at the Olympics in years past include Kiss (2002 Salt Lake Winter Games) Jimmy Page (2008 Beijing Olympics), Alanis Morisette (2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics), Snow Patrol (2012 London Olympics), The Who (2012 London Olympics), Paul McCartney (2012 London Olympics), Queen (2012 London Olympics), and Muse (2012 London Olympics).
The opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics Games is slated to kick off tomorrow July 26th at 7:30PM Paris time, or 1:30pm EST. Among other unprecedented facts, for the first time in the Games’ history the opening ceremony will not be held in the actual stadium, but rather along the Seine River in Paris.
For those unfimiliar, Gojira are one of the most prominent modern metal acts and are the biggest metal band to come out of France. The band has garnered a global fanbase for their ingenious metal songwriting and for being one of few metal acts who’ve made climate change and environmental conservation prominent themes within their music. In recent years the band has received Grammy nominations for albums Magma (2016) and Fortitude (2021), and they’ve toured alongside some of the biggest acts in metal including Metallica and Slipknot.
