Zombi - 2020 (yes that is the album title)

[The Mollusk]

The horror-infused prog two-piece comprised of great atmospheric instrumentalist Steve Moore and smashy splashy drummer A.E. Paterra are back with a new album, their first in 5 years, this Friday.

I really dig the Zombi stuff I'm familiar with - that is to say the two albums and the EP they released between '06-'09 - but I've never really bothered to check out the stuff afterwards, especially since I'd heard from a couple of people that the subsequent album "Escape Velocity" (although featuring their best album art NSFW) was something of a let down. Based on those comments, and my own unwillingness to hear for myself, I guess I'm not too disheartened to check out the three singles from this new album and find myself utterly bored.

No Damage / Earthscraper / Breakthrough & Conquer

B&C is the best of the three, and that's almost certainly why they chose to drop that one first, but even then, it's not great. Zombi at their peak are a band who can draw out a chunky as fuck arpeggiated riff, a couple of simple synth chords and pounding drums in an off-kilter time signature for 4 minutes and make it sound fucking GREAT. Proper enveloping walls of cosmic doom, literally like watching an really slow scene in a horror film, maggots writhing in the dark, pulling out to a huge sweeping overhead shot of a ruinous city engulfed in an a brooding faceless evil. They've tried to capture that again with these tracks, except they're all (relatively, for Zombi) very short and don't conjure up the same vibe at all. They're just dull.

I mean, consider them at their best:

The increasingly dramatic stabs and subsequent icy, barren atmospherics of Surface to Air.

The ... ^{fuck it, there's no other way to describe this} ... FUCKING EPIC Spirit Animal which has one of the most air-punching face-scrunching crescendos of any BIG BASTARD song I've heard.

The ridiculously groovy Italo-disco-in-a-dystopian-hellscape of Sapphire.

YES MATE.

New album tracks pale in comparison. "Surface to Air" and "Spirit Animal" both only have 5 tracks and yet they manage to stretch the runtime nicely between 45-60 minutes, so the 9-track list for this new one doesn't leave me with much hope of hearing any 15-minute horror-prog belters, but I suppose we'll see.

[magval]

Escape Velocity is even better than Spirit Animal, I reckon. They seem to flit between albums with a few long songs and albums with lots of normal songs. I love the long stuff though - my favourites are Siberia II (from Shape Shift) and Infinity (from a split EP but later attached to Spirit Animal reissues) as both are excuses for Paterra to improvise drum stuff over deathly-long prolonged synth stuff that barely changes for aaaaages.

Siberia II - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys9oWJvdf_M

Infinity - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi7ACLrM9Nc

Shape Shift is also almost all short songs and they're definitely at their best when they just give into the urge to subject the listener to 14 minutes of an idea developing, but there's a separate valid satisfaction to the types of songs that it looks like 2020 will be comprised of.

Check this out too - the section where the song gives way to stop/start bass playing is cool as fuck - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDbeEN7PglQ

Spirit Animal (in 2009) was the last time I bought an animal based solely on its cover art and they very quickly became one of my favourite bands. It's very like the David Shepard painting on the wall of the Trotters' flat.





Just wanted to mention that smashy splashy drummer AE Paterra also plays synths and a few of their songs are credited to him solely (if I recall correctly). Both lads also do solo stuff under different names.

[niat]

Spirit Animal (in 2009) was the last time I bought an animal based solely on its cover art.

Wow, where do you keep it? What's the going rate for an elephant?

[The Mollusk]

Damn I listened to "Escape Velocity" earlier and it's really good haha. Great pulsing synths. Thanks for praising it!

[magval]

Wow, where do you keep it? What's the going rate for an elephant?

Haha. ALBUM.

Did it with a Mortiis CD once because I liked other black metal and I suppose goblins in general, with less success.

[Gregory Torso]

Siberia II - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys9oWJvdf_M

This is excellent. I've been having dreams like this.

[The Mollusk]

Yeah actually this album is great. Still not listened to "Shape Shift" yet so I can't ascertain how much of a link there is between the two but this thing is just massive riffs floating around like a space station chock full to the fucking brim with some flesh-eating world-conquering alien virus that's absolutely tearing the galaxy a new arse. Fucking hell man this band is ace.

[Pancake]

OMG OMG OMG!

Escape Velocity is probably one of my most listened to records of the 21stC, not best just most listened to, along with Tarot Sport and Gemini by Wild Nothing, can'ts waits for this

[The Mollusk]

Yeah this and their other two most recent albums have been in huge rotation for me in the last couple of weeks. They've really won me back around from my initial skepticism, and to be honest I now don't really think they have any particularly bad material. Fantastic band.

[Crabwalk]

I highly recommend Steve Moore's album under his Lovelock alias. It's called Burning Feeling and he fully unleashes his love for mid 80s Italo Disco. The vocal tracks on it are especially great.

Burning Feeling
Maybe Tonight

[BlodwynPig]

I was looking forward to this, so glad that it surpassed Nags' expectations once he'd listened to it properly. Nothing more to add until I've listened to it.

[The Mollusk]

I highly recommend Steve Moore's album under his Lovelock alias. It's called Burning Feeling and he fully unleashes his love for mid 80s Italo Disco. The vocal tracks on it are especially great.

Burning Feeling
Maybe Tonight

Cheers for this, I had been wondering where best to start with his solo stuff. It appears he's also released a new EP under this alias a couple of months ago.

I checked out a bit of the music he's done under his real name and enjoyed some, but not all, of it. He put out a handful of minimal techno sort of tunes recently which were alright. His album with Majeure is also pretty cool, but I need to listen to it some more.

[BlodwynPig]

New John Carpenter album looks familiar

[The Mollusk]

Hahaha fucks sake that guy on the right always makes me laugh. He looks like he's just done a rancid silent fart and he's waiting for it to hit your nostrils