CD Odyssey Disc 1920: Zeal & Ardor

A very long day ends with the review of a very odd record…

Disc 1920 is…Greif

Artist: Zeal & Ardor

Year of Release: 2024

What’s up with the Cover? Behold the legendary Vogel Gryff itself, in all its badassery!

If you don’t know what the Vogel Gryff is, then I encourage you to look it up, where you will also learn about the Wild Maa and the Leu and many other fascinating facts besides.

Or maybe you would prefer to just live in a state of bewilderment over just what Zeal & Ardor are going on about – which would be a perfectly appropriate way to explore this record.

How I Came To Know It: I loved Zeal & Ardor’s 2018 album “Stranger Fruit” and since then I check in on them when they release something new. They don’t always grab me, but for whatever reason “Greif” was able to once again catch my attention.

How It Stacks Up: I have two Zeal & Ardor records and this a distance second in the rankings.

Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4

Where does something go from strangely compelling to merely strange? It’s a dangerous line that is as jagged as a lightning bolt, and on “Greif” Zeal & Ardor are determined to ride it.

Categorizing Zeal & Ardor is an impossible task. They mix chants, prog, metal and every other damned thing that is remotely jarring into a chunky staccato soup of sound. It’s some of the most fearless music you’ll hear and on “Greif” it challenged me from the very beginning.

The beginning here starts before you hear a single note, with the decision to apparently misspell the album title. Turns out it wasn’t misspelled at all, but (after much internet searching) references a Swiss word for “griffin” and a fascinating festival in the town of Basel. So there you go – not a single note in and already searching the interweb for meaning, are we?

Slightly irritated at knowing none of this on my own, I nevertheless gamely sallied forth to listen to the multitude of sounds, soundscapes and song structures that awaited me on “Greif”.

My journey would encounter Soundgarden like riffs, proggy drum-driven metal that would make Tool proud, and songs that landed somewhere between church hymn and what could be the movie soundtrack for a futuristic take on the Fall of the House of Usher. If you think Zeal & Ardor are embracing their freak flag on “Stranger Fruit” then “Greif” is them flying that flag on Jupiter.

All of which initially led me to this place where I was undecided about the most key consideration – do I like it? Would I recommend it to you, dear reader, with my reputation on the line?

From a purely creative perspective, the critic in me is impressed. This stuff is quite the admixture of styles, patched together like Frankenstein’s monster – deliberate and grotesque. Zeal & Ardor are playing with sound, but like a mad scientist, they want you to see them at their work, and to be appreciated for the mad genius of the result.

The music lover in me had nothing to prove other than to sit back and decide if I was having a good time. Some of this record led me to the negative. It was work to sort through, and the deliberately jarring approach to the songs is consistently up in your grill. Even when I was digging it (which was often) I couldn’t help but feel I was being messed with.

But then other times, I was giddy with the feeling of discovery. Where would this go next? Fortunately, the songs go often enough to melodic structures that draw you in. Sure it’s a “draw you in” of early Red Hot Chili Peppers crossed with Tool, crossed with the Alan Parson's Project, but I like all those bands.

In the end, the record won me over. The playing is tight, the vocals by lead singer and mad creator Manuel Gagneux are rich in tone and highly adaptive (they have to be). And while Zeal & Ardor may insist on mixing a dozen styles and approaches to not just music, but to sound generally, they curate those choices with care. Yes, it is clever, but clever with purpose. The result will have you moshing or tapping your toes – just don’t try to predict when it will happen; just be ready to lean in when it comes.

At no point does this record give you a moment to consider and digest what has just happened. You have to surrender yourself to it and just enjoy whatever whim the ole Z&A brigade are whipping up for these few bars.

I think it would be very easy to hate this record, but like Frankenstein’s Monster, you should reject that instinct. This album is a monster, but it is a monster with a very large musical vocabulary, and the soul of a poet. You just have to close your eyes and listen without judgment, and you’ll find love in your heart for what you hear.

Best tracks: Nope. Not gonna do that this time. It is all one curious mix of “what now?” and picking out individual tracks just doesn’t feel right.

CD Odyssey Disc 1179: Zeal & Ardor

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