Gojira deny Olympics opening song was satanic: ‘It’s French history: beheaded people, red wine, and blood’

French metal band performed 19th-century French anthem “Ah! Ça Ira” along with an actor playing the beheaded Marie Antoinette

The French heavy metal band Gojira has denied that their performance during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 was satanic.

The band, who formed in 1996, performed the 19th-century French anthem “Ah! Ça Ira” along with an actor playing the beheaded Marie Antoinette.

Some online commentators characterized the performance as “satanic”, but frontman Joe Duplantier dismissed that accusation during a Rolling Stone interview.

“It’s none of that,” said Duplantier. “It’s French history. It’s French charm, you know, beheaded people, red wine, and blood all over the place — it’s romantic, it’s normal.

“There’s nothing satanic,” he added with a laugh.

The musician continued: “France is a country that made a separation between the state and religion during the revolution. And it’s something very important, very dear to the foundation of republican France.

French heavy metal band Gojira performing during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games Paris 2024. (Buda Mendes/Getty Images)

“We call it laïcité. It’s when the state is not religious anymore, so therefore it’s free in terms of expression and symbolism. It’s all about history and facts. We don’t look too close closely at symbolism in terms of religion.”

Gojira, who The Independent has previously called “one of the leading lights in original, progressive 21st-century metal”, contributed to just one section of the sprawling opening ceremony.

French progressive metallers Gojira in 2016 (Press)

In a two-star review of the event, The Independent’s Nick Hilton wrote: “As the armada of requisitioned sightseeing vessels paraded down the river, the banks played host to great French musical icons like, er, Lady Gaga and – checks notes – Celine Dion.

“Gaga introduced a splash of colour to the ceremony on the murky waters. An extensive clean-up operation had been undertaken to make the Seine – a notoriously unsanitary body of water – fit for purpose.

“Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, even went for a dip, to prove the success of these purifying procedures. “A little cool but not so bad,” was Hidalgo’s verdict after a stunt that evoked images, for me at least, of John Gummer making his daughter eat a hamburger at the height of BSE mania.

“So, what symbolised France, in the tableaus performed along the route? Can-cans, the reconstruction of Notre-Dame, Louis Vuitton, Les Misérables, ballet, a heavy metal interpolation of the Habanera from Carmen, New Wave cinema, ménages à trois, Aya Nakamura, the Louvre, Debussy, Ravel, Jacques Cousteau, Minions in berets, “La Marseillaise”, drag, and an Assassin’s Creed adjacent torchbearer (Ubisoft are a French company, I guess). All of this was shot through an increasingly bleary lens, spattered with the rain that no amount of preparation could control.”

Follow The Independent’s Paris 2024 Olympics live blog here for real-time updates.