Zu - Carboniferous (Ipecac / Southern)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Trying to review this without making the comparison to a full band Lightning Bolt is nigh on impossible, but also pretty accurate, despite its glaring obviousness. You're almost screaming it to passers by within a few notes of the opening, scene setting 'Ostia'. It's something to do with the fact that whilst huge riffs and speeding rhythms are often at the core of Zu's work, as they are with the 'Bolt, they're a far more intricately textured (though that's not to say better, necessarily) proposition - there's saxophone all over this, and it spends as much time having fun with top-end screeching as it does guttural bass drones.
They're a power-jazz trio themselves, but part of the fun of being on Ipecac is that if you want an amazing guitarist for a bit, or a unique vocalist for a good shouting session, you can call on a pretty impressive roster of label mates. As such, The Melvins' King Buzzo is responsible for some destructive six string action on Carboniferous, and what little there is that one could possibly sing over this kind of music is handled by none other than label boss Mike Patton. His contribution to 'Soulympics' is one of the few things that stands out from thrilling mire - maybe it's because the music is at its most ear-stabbingly uncomfortable, or maybe it's just because it's actually got a person's voice on it. Any voice other than Pattons - a chameleonic whisper meets operatic, demon summering howl - would not have worked. His, however, being as messed up as it is, sits amidst the clamour rather well.
But what keeps this from being an unlistenably disparate group of collaborations, sounds and influences is that Zu never rock anything less than really, really f**king hard. There are incredibly catchy riffs all over these indecipherable rhythms and skronking saxophone parts. Skronking isn't a word, but it is a sound - a sound that Zu make better than anyone. Tracks very in pace and length but rarely in volume - if they do ever strip anything back, it's only to emphasise that a really sodding loud bit is coming. For long periods they strip nothing back at all, as they know they're inventive enough at this to be wholly cacophonous the whole time without respite and not lose listener's interest. Instead, you'll likely find yourself transfixed.
As with all great metal (though this isn't metal, but it is metal, you get me?), it's a little bit silly, and it's aware of the fact - tracks are called things like 'Obsidian' (which sounds like a group of sperm whales playing flying V guitars), or 'Orc', which is surely meant to soundtrack the day to day life of something that lives exclusively in a dingy cave, eating sewage (Mike Patton?).
Does being so consistently inventive, so doggedly against the norm, so deliberately ignorant of codes of practice when it comes to these things, constitute its own kind of dullness, repetitiveness, mundanity? It could. But that's why the rock element is so important to Zu. They're playing riffs, and yes, other people have played riffs before. But whilst I can name people who have played them like this, the only names I bring up in comparison are the likes of Lightning Bolt, The Melvins, Ruins, The Thing, Sunn O)))... those of unquestionably pioneering geniuses. It's time to start counting Zu up there with them, says I.
Carboniferous is pretty much a masterclass in how to play each of these instruments (the bass, the drums, guitar, saxophone, the human vocal chords) in a way that's informed by free jazz as much as it is hard rock. Just when I thought I might not listen to something of its ilk for a while, until the next Lightning Bolt record perhaps, along comes a record which makes me consider the majority of other music to be woefully ill conceived.
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