The following report is courtesy of Chris Harris from MTV News:

If you're not exactly sure how to pronounce GOJIRA don't fret - neither does Joe Duplantier, who fronts the French death-metal outfit of the same name.

"I don't know, myself, how to pronounce it correctly," he confessed with a slightly embarrassed chuckle to Metal File last week, in between tracking vocals for the band's upcoming fourth LP, The Way of All Flesh, which is slated for a Stateside release October 14. "In France, people say Go-gee-rah, and some say Ga-jeer-uh, but I think the right way is the Japanese way: Go-jeer-ah. That's the one I always go with."

You say to-may-toe, I say to-mah-toe — let's call the whole darned thing off. After all, Gojira have a lot going on these days. In addition to self-producing The Way of All Flesh ("We have many loans," Duplantier said), their much-anticipated follow-up to 2005's From Mars to Sirius, the guys are planning out their fall tour plans, working on ideas for album number five, and working on their broken English. Duplantier said he'd like to move to New York — his "favorite place on Earth" — for a year "to improve my English."

But first, let's talk about the new record. According to Duplantier, Flesh is a conceptual work, focusing on the morbid topic of death.

"That's the theme — it's about death itself," he explained. "It's also about the immortality of the soul. That's the main subject for us. Since we started to play and release albums, we've always talked about the same thing: the soul.

"This album's got a more dramatic feel to it, and some of the lyrics are almost cynical," continued Duplantier, who worked with the CAVALERA CONSPIRACY on their latest LP. "Usually, with my lyrics, I'm always positive. But on this album, I'm so pissed off with the situation on Earth right now, how we're abusing so much, and we take everything that we can take from the ocean, and we kill off endangered species. So in some of the songs, it's almost like a requiem for the Earth. This record is a lot darker — like, a lot darker, I would say. The music is darker and more violent."

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