ZEUS!
By Jove! Italian duo ZEUS! (Luca Cavina, electric bass – Calibro 35, Craxi, Incident on South Street; Paolo Mongardi, drums – Fuzz Orchestra, Ronin, Fulkanelli, formerly in Jennifer Gentle) is back with eleven new pills of uncontrolled prog-math-metal frenzy. Being the first italian band to ever get signed by San Diego cult label THREE ONE G, which will license the album in the U.S., a cameo by Justin Pearson himself (label owner, founding member of legendary post-hardcore pioneers SWING KIDS and THE LOCUST, now in beligerent four-piece RETOX) is mandatory; in fact, he literally tears his lungs apart on the track “Sick And Destroy”.
Following the band's 2010 eponymous debut, “Opera” crushes any possible competitor in the fields of fractured avant-metal and heavy rock in general, setting new standards in extreme music perspectives. The architecture of the tracks, both modular and kaleidoscopic, conveys basic compositional patterns recombined in complex instrumental textures, musically challenging, yet soaked in heavily personal (and perhaps unconsciously Italian) lyricism. Minimalism and maximalism, transversality and organicity, complex simplicity, mathematical harshness and expressive urgency. It is in this series of opposing counterpoints that lies ZEUS' own trademark. Introducing an OFFSET-TANNEN co-production, this Grand Guignol-esque float will be landing in Europe next february. Irony is not a dead scene yet, with song titles the likes of “La Morte Young” (mocking the godfather of minimalism, La Monte Young: “morte” is the italian word for “death”), “Giorgio Gaslini Is Our Tom Araya” (both celebrating the great jazz pianist and taking to the next level what ZU once stated in “Tom Araya Is Our Elvis”), and “Lucy in the Sky with King Diamond” (combining Liverpool's Fab Four with the legendary main man of Mercyful Fate). Other special guests include Vincenzo Vasi (bass and theremin for Vinicio Capossela, Mike Patton's Mondo Cane et al.) and Nicola Ratti (guitar, Ronin). Recorded and mixed by Tommaso Colliva (Calibro 35, Muse) at Officine Meccaniche and Che Studio in Milan, and mastered by the almighty James Plotkin (O.L.D., Khanate) in Philadelphia. Know the deal... failure's not an option.
