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Let’s have it right: Bloodstock 2025 has been an all-time classic year for the festival. As we come to reflect on the end of a hugely memorable weekend, it’s hard to find any faults: an amazing attendance of friendly, passionate fans, some great sets by new discoveries and some old classics, lovely, blazing sunshine throughout and a pair of unforgettable, genuinely special headline slots. And that’s before we get to the third…
The task of putting the final cherry on this delicious cake falls to French metal legends Gojira, headlining for the second time. It’s a very good omen that, just prior to the band coming on, the entire field joins in unison to sing Ozzy Osbourne’s No More Tears.
Gojira haven’t even come on yet and there’s a moment that has got hairs standing up and spines tingling. When Joe Duplantier strides on, introduces his band and fireworks, flames and smoke all explode as Gojira launch into Only Pain, it is completely captivating.
Whereas both Trivium and Machine Head succeeded by playing sets filled with huge, anthemic heavy metal bangers, Gojira take a slightly different approach by being rhythmically hypnotic and suffocating; there might be less in the way of audience chants, but songs like Backbone, Silveria and Amazonia are all capable of sucking you into their unique and singular world.
Quite where you look as you’re being sucked in…well…that’s another thing altogether. Gojira haven’t obtained the reputation of being one of the very best live bands on the planet by standing still; be it Joe’s pick-scraping, screaming, Hetfield-esque, rock star charisma, bassist Jean-Michel Labadie’s high-kicking, tongue-wagging enthusiasm or the endless amount of pyro, it’s a lot to take in.
Surely, though, if there was a man that holds the attention for the longest, then drummer Mario Duplantier might be the guy. He’s an outrageous drummer, capable of inhuman things, and he riles the crowd up several notches when he holds up cards telling them to “MAKE SOME NOISE”, asking if they “WANT SOME MORE?” and, showing a little bit of comic relief, offers fish and chips for a very competitive price of £10.
Highlights are plentiful: the emotional crush of Stranded, the stadium-sized Another World, the woozy, intricate Flying Whales and the poignant beauty of the closing The Gift Of Guilt all stand out. But, for massive moments, their Grammy-winning, Olympic Games ceremony anthem Mea culpa, introduced by Duplantier as being about the French Civil War and a time where “violence was sometimes necessary”, and a cover of Sabbath’s Under The Sun, both give the set that something special that great headline slots always require.
Bloodstock 2025 might have been the best yet, and Gojira might just have been the best of the best.
Gojira Bloodstock 2025 setlist
Only Pain
The Axe
Backbone
Stranded
Flying Whales
The Cell
From The Sky
Another World
Silveria
Mea culpa (Ah! Ça ira!)
The Chant
Amazonia
L’enfant Sauvage
Under The Sun/Every Day Comes And Goes
The Gift Of Guilty