You could say Gojira started a new French revolution at the 2024 Paris Summer Games.
As the first-ever heavy metal band to perform at an Olympic Opening Ceremony, the head-bangin’ quartet delivered a fiery performance of “Ah! Ça Ira,” a song popularized during the French Revolution, at the Conciergerie on the banks of the Seine river July 26.
Not only did their show light up the city with pyrotechnics, it literally turned heads when a performer dressed as a decapitated Marie Antoinette popped up on screen to sing along.
“Y’all the Olympics just took off Marie Antoinette’s head while playing French metal music?” one viewer wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “This is the craziest s–t I’ve ever seen.”
Meanwhile, another social media user joked, “One thing about the French, they’re gonna remind you they guillotined tf out of marie antoinette in the name of liberation.”
And that was the whole point, according to Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier.