Labels: Bar La Muerte – Escape From Today – Off-Set – Sangue Dischi – Shove – Smartz
Review by: Oli Saunders
The Italians are generally pretty good at coming up with some pretty fucked up hardcore and judging from the first minute of this record Zeus! are no exception. I don’t even though where to begin when describing this; I rarely listen to anything that’s so experimental and harsh at the same. Zeus! are comprised of two members, one on bass and the other on drums, though they utilise some other instruments on record, both playing technically and skillfully. A lot of the time they conjure up weird and wonderful riffs, that are not all harsh, and flow all over the place with regular changes in tempo. Importantly, you have no idea where they are going next with it and that it what makes it good. When things get fast vocals tend to come into the mix – distorted screams that are pretty unnerving. They remind a lot of Chino Moreno’s vocals on the Deftones song ‘Elite’, if that helps. Other attempted comparisons are that they sound a bit like Zurich Against Zurich but with far longer songs that are less harsh and have a lot more to them. Perhaps a comparison could be drawn too with A Flower Kollapsed, who play noisy hardcore that’s generally a bit harsher but far less experimental.
There is so much contained within the thirty six minutes of this album. Furthermore, the start is fairly straightforward compared to the end – it’s as if they just kept pushing themselves towards chaos and improvisation. The start of ‘Ate U’ is right out of a cheesy horror flick before it slides back into the band’s “regular” territory. Two longer songs towards the end, both over six minutes, showcase the band’s talent even more as there is so much variation. In particular, the final song ‘Untitled’ is a great ending to proceedings – I bet they often use this as a final song when playing live. Great grooving build up, then a technical guitar solo, followed by a slowed down intermittentance that launches into the multi-instrumental finale of the album – it’s a relatively tame ending but I think that’s the point. I don’t normally like it when the music just fades out but it seems apt here.
In all honesty, I am not going to listen to this very often, but I am glad I checked it out and this kind of music needs making. I wouldn’t have given this much time if I had just stumbled across this but after lisening to the whole thing in order to review it I see it’s many merits. If you enjoy technical music crossed with noise and and think Starscream would make a good vocalist then get on this.
November 8th 2010