Zëro
Diesel Dead Machine

THE REVIEW

Zëro was born in 2007, in Lyon, from the meeting of four musicians who, without wasting time, debuted in 2008 with the album Joke Box. However, the term "debut" does not mean that Zëro is a group of young inexperienced novices. Indeed, from recent photos, you can see they are clean-shaven, but these are personal choices. They are in fact Françosi Cuilleron, Ivan Chiossone, Franck Laurino, and Eric Aldéa, the core members who have been swimming in the waters of the European underground scene since the late '90s, first as Deity Guns and later as Bästard.

It takes me no more than one listen to notice the accuracy and originality of Zëro. The four know how to expertly blend music that has the structures of math/post-rock with melodic accents to a kind of noise that strangely does not give the impression of murkiness, but on the contrary, likes to show a certain refinement; they skilfully mix in small doses of new wave, nods to post-hardcore, instrumental jam band atmospheres, and electronics that always serve what they are layered upon, more decorative than genre-specific; all accompanied by a wise use of a voice, not particularly distinctive, but that has listened to and intelligently absorbed the most disparate influences and knows how to push the music to the desired effect.

The Jesus Lizard is the name that immediately comes to mind when listening to the swirling bass and slide of Bobby Fischer, and the pounding blues stitched together by the screeching guitars of Load Out. But the Jesus Lizard always come to my mind. Dreamland Circus Sideshow is a programmatic title for the piece and its sparse and somewhat hallucinatory ghost circus atmospheres. Enough… Never Enough is a beautiful piece, a child of the somewhat dark new wave with electronic veins of The Sound, and the effectiveness of the two instrumentals The Opening and Cheeeese is surprising. In the claustrophobic The Cage, you can hear a bit of Fugazi and certain gloomy distortions of Christian Death, while Talking Heads and The Cramps pervade the hiccupping and sickly Sick To The Bone. The album closes with Viandox, the third instrumental, where electronics and guitars restlessly entwine around each other, an instrumental which once again does not bore, and perhaps, is the most successful.

Excellent musicians, precise, with taste in composition. A taste, however, that may seem not manneristic, but perhaps a bit impersonal. Zëro's music harbors endless influences, well assimilated and reworked, but it is as if everything is placed where it is for a sort of stylistic perfectionism, and the music, which at first listen should be furious, worn-out, and oppressive, sounds also surprisingly calm. Furthermore, the sound is maximally compressed. Yet, in no time I got the vinyl.