“I’ve eaten lies to fend you off.”
Zeal & Ardor. Zeal. &. Ardor. Now here’s a band that’s impossible to ignore. They create a punchy, swaggering, in-your-face synthesis of blues, black metal and spirituals, with a smattering of synth pieces to flesh out a sound that blends a variety of familiar elements into something fresh and exciting. To date, their high point has been their 2018 album Stranger Fruit, with such incredible tracks as “Gravedigger’s Chant”, “Servants” and “Row Row”.
However, after six years I am wondering if Zeal & Ardor are starting to get a bit self-conscious. Perhaps they are worried about being pigeonholed as “that black metal spirituals band” and trying to figure out how to enter the next stage of their career. If that’s the case, it will explain an awful lot of what I have heard on their latest album, GREIF.
The album starts with promise. “the Bird, the Lion and the Wildkin” contains many of the bold, catchy repetition that has made Zeal & Ardor such a success story. This then segues into “Fend You Off”: a fine, waltzing tour through loud-soft dynamics and raspy black metal shrieks.
But this is followed up by “Kilonova” and “are you the only one now?”. These tracks are quite different – “Kilonova” has a tense, danceable quality and “are you the only one now?” is a ballad with a delightful hook – but they share the same problems. Both tracks feel like they want to build to something but don’t give the listener any satisfying payoff.
And this is a frustration that I had with most of the album. There are so many tracks that lack direction, or lose momentum before it is built.
There are echoes of the “black metal spirituals” sounds that we’ve heard before. But overwhelmingly, such as on tracks like “are you the only one now?”, these moments feel like cameos. I think bands that want to try something different deserve respect, and if Zeal & Ardor were starting to view the “black metal spirituals” angle as a gimmick, the solution is clearly not to replace it with some other gimmick. Yet it’s not clear to me that GREIF covers any new ground at all, except perhaps to occasionally push the keyboards a little more to the front.
At the end of the day, what really matters is the songwriting. And while there are plenty of interesting ideas on this album, the compositions generally feel like they lack polish.
There are some strong moments on this album. “Go home my friend” and “369” feel like quintessential Zeal & Ardor – it’s a shame that they are “just” interludes. “Solace” and “Hide in Shade” are two stronger tracks that suffer from being placed at the end of the album.
I’m not sure if Zeal & Ardor are a band searching for a longer-term vision, or if they were simply up against an unforgiving deadline when writing this album. Longtime fans will spot all the elements that put this band on the map, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s missing something.
5/10
GREIF releases on the 23rd August through Redacted GmbH and can be pre-ordered here.