Zeal and Ardor to Release Sophomore Effort June 8th

 

Zeal and Ardor is an experimental metal act fronted by Manuel Gagneux. The project brings a fusion of blues, Gospel, and spiritual melodies together with scathingly dark metal overtones to create a murky, soulful, harsh, headbanging new sound. Zeal and Ardor achieved critical acclaim with the first album release “Devil is Fine” in 2016, and what began as a joke brought about by the suggestion of 4chan users to mesh spiritual melodies and black metal became an international act.

 

Now Zeal and Ardor returns with sophomore effort promising to be more poignant, more precise, and more diverse. “Strange Fruit” is set for release on June 8, 2018 via MVKA. Can Zeal and Ardor top “Devil Is Fine” with their new creation?

 

With the first single, “Gravedigger’s Chant”, Gagneux delivers a dark, inviting, burial ode. His vocals are nothing short of perfect crooning over the bluesy piano chords and thunderous beat. The first track succeeds at grabbing attention indeed.

 

“Waste” is unrelenting with heavily distorted tremolo riffing, blast beats, and maniacal howls hearkening to the glory of Norwegian black metal. The raw, violent brutality of the music contrasts strikingly against Gagnuex’s  melodic vocals, it’s very provoking; downright spellbinding even the way Gagneux can bring together such starkly different sounds into a cohesive metal monolith. “Built on Ashes” builds on heavily distorted guitar and somber piano chords drawing again on that wonderful contrast between bluesy southern spiritual and maniacally dark metal.

I was very excited to see “Don’t You Dare” on the tracklist. This is probably my personal favorite Zeal and Ardor song. The song features well crafted blues licks and flawless execution of damningly heavy black metal-esque riffing paired against harsh, tortured vocal shrieks. The heaviness of the song builds up into a wall of black that hits you head on and knocks you on your ass just to spit you back out into the cool delta blues before launching another vicious attack.

 

I’m certainly looking forward to giving the rest of the album a listen when it drops on June 8. I anticipate more enchanting things to come based on what I’ve heard so far, and I’m curious to see what the rest of the Trve Kvlt Community thinks. (By the way if you haven’t checked out “Devil is Fine” I strongly encourage you to give that a shot.)

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