Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	86/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
About.com
AllMusic
Alternative Press
The A.V. Club	A−
BBC Music	favorable
Blabbermouth.net	9.5/10
The Guardian
Kerrang!
Pitchfork Media	8.1/10
PopMatters	8/10
Spin	8/10

L'Enfant Sauvage (French for "The Wild Child") is the fifth studio album and major label debut by the French progressive death metal band Gojira. It was released 26 June 2012 via Roadrunner Records.

Gojira was going to tour with Lamb of God and Dethklok, but because of Randy Blythe's arrest in the Czech Republic, the tour was cancelled. Gojira subsequently announced a headline tour of their own, which began in January 2013 with support from The Devin Townsend Project and The Atlas Moth.

During the recording of the album, Joe Duplantier became a father. "It's a trip man, it's amazing. Of course I'm very influenced by what happened and talking about birth and becoming a dad is not completely disconnected, it's relevant in a way, but everything is influencing me when I'm writing."

L'Enfant Sauvage is inspired by François Truffaut's film of the same name which tells the true story of Victor of Aveyron, a child who was found alone in the woods with behaviors closer to a wild animal than a civilized human."We are part of this world. And also there is this idea that an enfant sauvage, a child that grew up in nature, is not confronted with others, with emotions, with guilt and identity, so it would be a state where you are closer to the essence of things."

Frontman, guitarist and songwriter Joe Duplantier talks about the meaning of the album by saying, "When you become a musician, you don't have a boss telling you what to do so you have to be very responsible." He goes on to say "With freedom comes responsibility, so I'm asking myself, 'What is freedom? What does it mean to me?' L'Enfant Sauvage reflects on that. There's no answer though. There’s just life and questions."

Duplantier expanded on this idea in an interview with The Quietus, explaining that "Since the beginning, since the very first demo even, I've been obsessed with the human condition, the soul, why we are here, and is there an answer to that question - the mysteries of life in general. Are we a body? Or are we more than that? And if we are more, then what are we? I'm full of questions, but there are no answers really, just intuition, and a strong intuition that we are more than just flesh and blood."

...
Wikipedia