After
six straight 3 star albums it was great to roll an album that set the bar a
little higher.
Disc 1179 is… Stranger Fruit
Artist: Zeal
& Ardor (sic)
Year of Release: 2018
What’s up with the Cover? A Zeal & Ardor crest Or on a
field Azure. Heraldically speaking, that is.
How I Came To Know It: I read a review of this album and
decided to check it out. I couldn’t find this album anywhere and the local
record store couldn’t order it in so I had to break down and order it from
Amazon. Argh.
How It Stacks Up: I only have one Zeal & Ardor album but I’m
going to be digging into their collection more and may end up with more. For
now, one album does not create a stack.
Ratings: 4 stars
Even after hearing tens of thousands of songs, every
now and then an album comes along that is able to surprise and inspire me
musically in ways I never imagined possible. “Stranger Fruit” is one of those
albums.
This record defies genre. Frontman and creative force
Manuel Gagneux bravely takes the sounds of slave-era spirituals, fuses them
with black metal and then throws blues and prog into the mix to create
something that is powerful, provocative and altogether unique.
Of course, anyone can bravely experiment with music
(later Radiohead comes to mind) but much of that experimentation is
unlistenable (again, later Radiohead). Zeal & Ardor has explored a whole
new approach to rock and roll and yet it still makes you want to rock out and
throw your hair in front of your face.
The bones of these songs come from old African-American
spirituals, repurposed from worship or work songs into anthems of anger and
rebellion. One could argue this is what those songs always were, but with Zeal
and Ardor’s addition of double-bass and electric-powered thump any veneer of
civility is stripped away.
The result is a rhythm driven assault that makes you
want to rise up, stand with legs firmly planted and mosh out. This is music for
the end of the world, combining the inherently iconoclastic nature of heavy
metal with social commentary, historical injustice and the planet’s troubled
history with race relations.
Every track has its moments, but an early high point
is “Don’t You Dare” a song that
starts with the sounds of crickets or cicadas at night, then the chant/singing
of Gagneux slowly building into a metal assault. Double bass drums push the
song into a crescendo of fury, only to break down to Gagneux again, rhythmically
shouting “Don’t you dare look away, boy!”
like some kind of post-apocalyptic overlord who has finally turned the tables
on his oppressors even though the act takes down civilization itself in the
process.
On “Ship of Fire”
Gagneux works in a rhythmic sway to his singing, with chanting in the
background that is half prison work crew, half demonic monk choir. This stuff
is weird, wonderful and altogether brilliant.
Yet for all this fury, the album also features “The Hermit” and “Solve” songs of ambient harmonics, organ and bird sounds that would
be equally at home on an Enya or Loreena McKennitt album. “The Fool” is a synth journey that feels like someone crossed 80s
Goth with the Phantom of the Opera. Why are these songs here? On their own they’d
be off-putting and out of place, but they arrive at just the right places in
the album to serve as a palate cleanser, so Zeal & Ardor can sound fresh
and visceral when they renew their assault.
It isn’t all chanting and metal screams; when he
wants to Gagneux demonstrates that he has a strong voice and a natural
understanding of melody. On “Built on
Ashes” his tone is reminiscent of the great Chris Cornell. The record has
as much range as it has fury, and it has plenty of fury.
Even though it is the album title, the record does go
to the “Stranger Fruit” metaphor once too often. It is a a riff on the 1939
Billie Holiday song “Strange Fruit” and
while it is a core inspiration for the album, the phrase lost a bit of punch
through overuse. It also would have been nice if they’d eschewed the use of the
ampersand and spelled ‘ardour’ correctly but I blame Noah Webster for that, not
Zeal & Ardor (sic).
These are minor quibbles however. This record is a
balls-to-the-wall thrill ride that meets with triumph and disaster and blends
them together into a new dynamic art form.
Best
tracks: Gravedigger’s
Chant, Servants, Don’t You Dare, Row Row, Ship on Fire, We Can’t Be Found,
Coagula, Built on Ashes
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