After drip-feeding several new singles this year, Swiss avant-garde metal band Zeal & Ardor return to North America on a headline tour to support the release of their new album, GREIF. The tour launches off in Philadelphia at the end of November and makes its way west to the Observatory in Santa Ana, CA on Saturday, December 14th. With support from London synth-rock duo, Zetra, and Portuguese post-black metal group, Gaerea, the evening was filled with black and white face paint, masked faces and cloaks.
Gaerea took me by complete surprise. As a fan of black metal, I was impressed to see a group with unique expressions of the genre including theatrical movement, pulsations between depressive, melancholic and heavy musical stylings, and most interestingly, the uniform anonymity of the group donned in black masks instead of corpse paint. Followed by a dramatic and slow opening came the entire venue headbanging in unison. The audience could not seem to get enough with an added encore and a huge applause. This is definitely a group to keep on the radar.
The crowd was amped for the headliners and soon enough, six cloaked figures took the stage. Zeal & Ardor opened with the first song on their new album, GREIF, called, “the Bird, the Lion, and the Wildkin”. The song intros into a choir of whistling which then explodes into heavy riffs. The new track was followed by “Wake of Nation” from their 2020 EP which was then followed by one of my favorites, “Götterdämmerung”, from their 2022 self-titled album.
The members stayed cloaked for the first several songs while the stage stayed moody in silhouette lighting. The setlist jumped between tracks from their 2018 album, Stranger Fruit, and 2022 self-titled album including, “Ship on Fire”, “Erase”, and “Gravedigger’s Chant” which highlighted front vocalist, Manuel Gagneux’s, ability to shift seamlessly between extreme vocal screaming and gospel-styled melodics. The show shifted into a slower pace for a few songs that gave the venue a strong storytelling vibe with a more of a pop sound on the new track, “Kilonova” from GREIF, and the melodic chanting in “Blood In the River” from the 2017 album, Devil Is Fine, which then perfectly erupts into the double-pedal fast-paced quintessential black metal sound.
The stage shifted from deep red lighting with flashing white lights to electric blues and then sinister greens and yellows as the show shifted pace into some of the heavier tracks including the haunting and doom-impending track, “Run” from 2022 album, Zeal & Ardor, the lamentful and then transformative chords of “Tuskegee” from 2020 EP Wake of a Nation, and the absolutely destructive riffs with eerie industrial sounds from “Death to the Holy”.
Coming back into a slower rhythm, the setlist took us through “Golden Liar”, and new tracks, “Sugarcoat” and “to my ilk” before jumping back into a heavy favorite, “Feed the Machine” followed by the closing song, “Devil Is Fine”, which is one of my favorite Zeal & Ardor music videos from the 2017 album, Devil Is Fine.
Santa Ana was not ready for the show to conclude when the stage went empty and encored the band out for a few more. The crowd was served some more bangers from the 2018, 2020, and 2022 albums including “Trust No One”, “Built on Ashes”, and “I Caught You”, below closing the evening on a newer track, “Clawing out”.
Hailing unique artistry within the sonic, visual and storytelling realms that compare to no other band on the scene, Zeal & Ardor came and captivated us to their every breath, beat, lyric and lore and we left with a satisfying satiation. Wrapping their headline tour this Wednesday, December 18th in Dallas, TX, catch them next time they come to the states or spring 2025 in Europe.
GALLERY: Zeal & Ardor, Gaerea at The Observatory OC in Santa Ana (December 14, 2024)
