I think Magma was written in two parts. There is the stuff they were working on before their mother got sick, and the stuff they wrote after. It is painfully obvious that Shooting Star, Magma, and Low Lands are directly about their mother.

I was drawn to the album by hearing the first two singles. They are right up my alley. I don't listen to any death metal except Gojira and Amon Amarth. I loved Mars to Sirius and Way of All Flesh but their last album was just okay. I am that guy that likes old Metallica and is still amazed that nobody makes similar music in a high quality way. Anyways Stranded was good but Silvera is amazing to me.

Silvera is about freeing your mind from something to change your world. Stranded is about not shutting someone out. The cell is about being overcrowded in your mind and letting it go. Pray is about... well creating your own world. Basically all songs about opening your mind and taking control of your own life.

Shooting Star is about their mothers' journey to "the other side". Magma is even more specific. Refering to the poison slowly spreading through the body and mind. Low Lands is no less vague about it's subject.

I think Yellow Stone is just a good groove that they couldn't figure out a song to go with it, but it's cool. They could have thrown in a guitar solo with the groove in the background and it would've been another minute or two of awesome, but I still like it. Liberation means:

the act or process of freeing someone or something from another's control : the act of liberating someone or something

Surely referring to their mother being freed from this earth. This must have a deep personal meaning for the band. I find nothing redeeming about it. It's not offensive, but doesn't sound good. That said, I'm glad it's on there. Put whatever you want on your album. I'm sure if they didn't own their own studio they would've been talked out of it.

Only Pain deals with struggling from the day you are born and no matter what you do you will someday die. This has a way different approach to death than the other songs of the same subject, so I would bet it was written with the first batch of songs. Though the doom and gloom message instead of a "life is what you make of it" message may have been influenced by all the events happening around them.

I read somewhere they were halfway through a lot of songs when the studio work and mother getting sick happened. Yet notice what the long songs are.... The Shooting Star, Magma, and Liberation are complete six minute long songs. Silvera and Stranded feel like completed, concise songs and that Gojira was moving in this direction already. The Cell feels incomplete however. Like it was chopped off at the end... a shame because it's probably my favorite next to Silvera.

I feel that "people's attention spans are getting shorter" is just their mind rationalizing their reason for not fully stretching out all their songs as they normally might. If you are wore out from buildind a studio with your bare hands and flying out to visit your sick mother and dealing with a funeral over and over are you going to try to add another verse to a song that is already awesome enough or are you going to work on your epic odes to your mother and try to get the album done after 4 years?

Side note: The clean singing slower songs are to their mother.

So basically while I love the album I am excited to see what they do next. I would expect it to be more like the Silvera/Cell direction I believe they were headed.