Zeal & Ardor – Stranger Fruit
Radicalis / MVKA – 2018
Metal, Rock, Roots, Avant-Garde, Black
Rated: ****
In the end we never wrote about those first two releases of the Swiss avant-garde metal project Zeal & Ardor lead by Manuel Gagneux. Simply, because we couldn’t completely grasp it. It jumped a bit too much around to really get hooked by it. There was something there, something between that ADHD hop, skip and a jump movement through blues, roots, soul and black metal. But it also overwhelmed you with something that felt like too much, much too much. But then came Graspop Festival. And they played to a completely and chuck full Metal Dome (to their own surprise) and the show was so incredibly good, it overwhelmed you (this time the good way) and left you in awe and full of love for the band. So, Stranger Fruit had to be bought. And on it, we still hear that somewhat weird combination of genres… that now work magnificently. With more of a thread through the songs, we can now enjoy a much stronger set of material and be awed by the melancholy and the pain or be chilled by the haunting voice and atmosphere. This is how the first two records were meant to be. And this comes close to Zeal & Ardor live. For that was and is, a true shock and awe experience…
(Written by JK)
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