Gojira's Christian Andreu to sit out remainder of band's North America tour

Gojira guitarist Christian Andreu will not play the remainder of the band's current North America tour so that he can return home to be with his newborn child.

In a social media statement yesterday (May 17), the band announced the temporary recruitment of Aldrick Guadagnino of fellow French metallers Klone, who will handle six-string duties for the trek's remaining dates.

“[Guadagnino] will be with us until the end of this tour,” the statement reads. “Somehow we managed to find a French man that shreds the guitar and looks exactly like Christian!”

Gojira's current North America tour – which they are undertaking with California alt-metal titans Deftones – is scheduled to run until May 28, with eight dates remaining. The next show takes place tonight (May 18) at the Met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The jaunt was originally planned for summer 2020, but was twice postponed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following the release of the band's seventh full-length, Fortitude, in April last year, their tour setlist has been peppered with cuts from the album, including Born For One Thing, Amazonia and Hold On.

In a 2021 interview with Guitar World, frontman Joe Duplantier waxed lyrical on the creation of Fortitude, describing his approach to guitar playing on the album as “very physical... but not sexual”.

“I have a physical approach to instruments; sometimes I'll pound on the guitar and it'll go ‘boom’ and I'll use that in a song,” he said, referring to what's now come to be known as the ‘Gojira’ pick scrape, heard, for example, on the album's eighth track, Sphinx.