1. Joseph Andrew Duplantier was born on 19 October 1976 and is a French-American musician, best known as the rhythm guitarist, vocalist, and lyricist of heavy metal band Gojira.
77 Facts About Joe Duplantier
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Joe Duplantier was born in Paris and grew up in Ondres.
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Joe Duplantier was raised in an environment where music and arts held a prominent place.
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Joe Duplantier learned to play the guitar at fourteen and formed his first band in high school.
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Joe Duplantier studied art and began working as a graphic designer before co-founding the death metal band Godzilla with his younger brother Mario in 1996.
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Joe Duplantier was a founding member, along with his brother, of the band Empalot.
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Joe Duplantier is the former bassist of Cavalera Conspiracy, to which Gloria and Max Cavalera invited him.
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Joe Duplantier possesses United States nationality by parentage, which led him to settle in New York City in 2011.
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Joe Duplantier owns a recording studio called Silver Cord Studio in Ridgewood, Queens.
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Joe Duplantier is engaged in thinking about ecological problems and environmental protection, reflected in his lyrics.
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Joe Duplantier expressed his support for indigenous peoples in Brazil through fundraising efforts.
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Joe Duplantier was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and grew up in Los Angeles.
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Joe Duplantier's father, Dominique Duplantier, born in 1945 in Bordeaux, is a French painter and architectural drafter, a former student in history at the Faculte des Lettres and engraving at the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
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Joe Duplantier's sister, Gabrielle, was born in 1978 in Bayonne, and his brother, Mario, was born in 1981.
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Joe Duplantier's mother, manifesting a marked interest in art activities, was a yoga and dance teacher in the periphery of Bayonne.
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When Joe Duplantier was thirteen, he discovered New York City for the first time, accompanied by his cousin during a visit to his family in Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg.
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Joe Duplantier grew up in an environment where his parents listened to blues, fado, pop, Mozart, Chopin, Piaf, L Shankar, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Pink Floyd, the Police, Supertramp, and Joan Baez.
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Joe Duplantier's sister listened to world music, country music, and African percussion.
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Joe Duplantier began playing his mother's classical guitar, which only had two strings.
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Joe Duplantier listened to hip hop music during a period of time while his cousin was passionate about Iron Maiden and Metallica.
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At the age of fourteen, Joe Duplantier began listening to Metallica's Ride the Lightning to find out more about this musical genre which aroused his curiosity.
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Joe Duplantier continued his interests in metal music with Master of Puppets, then Sepultura, and seeking to define his own musical identity he pursued death metal through the band Death.
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Joe Duplantier went to university for two years and spent between three and four years in art school, after which he began working as a graphic designer for a short time.
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Joe Duplantier said: "I found it so weird; people aren't bothered by what's on the beach, but when it's on a parking lot, it becomes a problem".
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Joe Duplantier recalled building cabins in the forest as a child.
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When launching the band, singing in French was irrelevant for Joe Duplantier; he chose instead to sing in English in efforts to globally project the band's aspirations.
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Joe Duplantier has been responsible for the artworks for Gojira's albums, each representing an idea that he spontaneously designs, highlighting visual minimalism and conciseness while trying to stand out from the codes of the metal scene.
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Joe Duplantier described the genre as a niche perceived as culturally unimportant in the country, contrasting with Scandinavia and Germany.
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In 2021, Fortitude increased Gojira's media exposure in France and earned them global chart success through the album revolving around Joe Duplantier's committed and positive lyrics.
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Joe Duplantier portrayed the band's lifestyle as "marginal", comprising musicians more creative than "self-destructive", and more interested in art than partying.
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Joe Duplantier later said they were "lucky" to meet because communication was the indicator of their personality matching and noted that none of them have drug addiction problems.
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Joe Duplantier portrays Gojira as "four brothers, united, to live our passion".
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Joe Duplantier was a member of a festive and theatrical band playing a fusion of musical genres called Empalot, involving his brother and friends, which toured in France from 1999 to 2004.
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Joe Duplantier stated that Gojira and the recording of The Way of All Flesh had been his main priority, which led him not to do extensive touring with Cavalera Conspiracy.
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Max Cavalera regretted that Joe Duplantier did not appear on the band's second album, Blunt Force Trauma.
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Joe Duplantier is the owner of Silver Cord Studio, a recording studio located in Ridgewood, Queens, New York, which he designed himself.
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Joe Duplantier managed the construction project and was involved daily over a period of six months.
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In 2016, by acknowledging that he appreciated creating musical arrangements while being responsible for the overall production of recorded music, Joe Duplantier saw himself more as a producer than a musician.
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Joe Duplantier mainly produces American bands at Silver Cord Studio.
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Mastodon performed a rendition of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven at his funeral while Joe Duplantier recorded it on his cell phone.
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Joe Duplantier has written and recorded hundreds of demo songs since the early 2000s, which are of an experimental genre.
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Joe Duplantier said that the ambition of Gojira in their early days was to be "violent and dissonant and weird".
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Joe Duplantier cites Mike Oldfield and his 1983 album Crises as a significant musical inspiration.
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Joe Duplantier has been surrounded by non-musical influences, such as noise, landscape, and emotion.
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Joe Duplantier has an interest in the music of Massive Attack, "old jazz", Dead Can Dance, classical music, traditional music, and Stephan Micus.
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Joe Duplantier has expressed admiration for French singer and songwriter Alain Bashung.
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Joe Duplantier has been known for his aggressive vocals and own signature style, going from a typical death growl to an emphasis on clean singing in Gojira's latest works.
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Joe Duplantier's clean singing had already appeared on Terra Incognitas "Clone", conveying the message of human interference with Mother Nature.
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Joe Duplantier used different techniques on the From Mars to Sirius album, going from a "growling timbre" to "semi-clean" vocals in an intonation echoing post-punk singer Jaz Coleman.
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Joe Duplantier experimented with his voice on The Way of All Flesh, and then he continued the clean vocals with the low note on L'Enfant Sauvages "Born in Winter".
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In 2016, Joe Duplantier said he redefined his vocal style with an even greater emphasis on singing.
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Joe Duplantier has expanded his vocal range by personal choice, citing a "vital" need to sing to develop vocal versatility and style diversity.
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Joe Duplantier would take a new vocal approach to his performances during the recording of Magma.
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Joe Duplantier's throat singing was incorporated with various musical forms punctuating "Amazonia", such as the woodwind instrument and the Jaw harp.
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Joe Duplantier's texts explore themes such as anguish, death, and loss.
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Joe Duplantier has a philosophical view of death which he, therefore, describes as "the idea of death", and believes in the afterlife, a notion he shared with his mother.
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However, Joe Duplantier explained problematic communication with a person close to him whom he esteemed.
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Joe Duplantier observed that the planet has been overpopulated and thus argued about his lifestyle in accordance with his convictions, saying: "I try to reduce my impact", adding, "but that seems like just a drop in the ocean".
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Joe Duplantier has been interested and worried about the environmental impact of animal husbandry which demands resources such as water, food and contributes to deforestation.
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Joe Duplantier was a vegetarian but switched to a vegan diet.
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Joe Duplantier constantly described himself as an animal-defender speaking in favor of preserving species while evoking humans' responsibility, saying, "The extinction of so many species is going to be one of our legacies".
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Joe Duplantier is a member of the International Artists Solidarity organization.
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Joe Duplantier has said being sensitive to the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, and after reflection and speech, he decided to undertake actions to accomplish positive results.
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For several days in late August 2021, Joe Duplantier participated in demonstrations supporting the Indigenous cause at one of the largest rallies of Indigenous people in Brazil.
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An action organized by artists, including Joe Duplantier, was undertaken during the protests in the Three Powers Plaza, in front of the Supreme Federal Court, with the intention of "putting pressure" on it and raising public awareness.
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The action, led by the Indigenous women of Guarani-Kaiowa, resulted in a performance by Joe Duplantier accompanied by these artists who poured blood on the ground and then mopped it up, shouting repeatedly "Indigenous blood, not a drop more".
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Joe Duplantier posted a video on Instagram, raising awareness about the arrest, asking his audience to join him in a "peaceful protest to demand the release of Paul Watson", in front of the parliament in Copenhagen.
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In 2010, while Gojira was on tour supporting Metallica in Lithuania, Joe Duplantier met his future wife twice in the same day during a "day off"; then Lars Ulrich invited them to drink wine together at the end of the night.
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In late 2011, Joe Duplantier relocated to New York at the start of the recording of L'Enfant Sauvage.
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Joe Duplantier's wife, Vilma, is an artist and animal rights activist.
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Joe Duplantier described Ulrich as having become a "kind of godfather" to their children, Mila, and Orest.
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Joe Duplantier's children have been raised listening to Billie Holiday, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and metal to develop their musical sensitivity.
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Joe Duplantier said he had made a long-planned move to the US because of his dual nationality, and to remain closer to his maternal family and Gojira's management, record company, and lawyer.
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Joe Duplantier is a bilingual speaker of English and French.
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Joe Duplantier's mother, diagnosed with cancer, asked the family to organize a "great celebration" and a "huge fire" after her death.
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Joe Duplantier's sister, Gabrielle, is a fine-art photographer working alongside her father on the family property in Ondres.
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When playing with Gojira in 2009, Joe Duplantier's equipment was listed as the following:.