ZEAL & ARDOR
Manuel Gagneux doesn’t know what a neutral zone is
Zeal & Ardor
MVKA
Switzerland’s genre-mashing maestro goes the extra mile
‘BLACK METAL MEETS black spiritual music.’ Bottle it, flog it for all it’s worth.
When Zeal & Ardor’s debut, Devil Is Fine, slithered into 2017’s end-of-year lists, we’d heard nothing like it: centuries-old slave chants blasphemed by black metal tremolo, bubbling electronica, dusty blues, Gothenburg melodies, and baroque Nick Cave-iness. Coining the idea of African American slaves praising Satan rather than God, Zeal & Ardor’s Manuel Gagneux established his ‘thing’. Stranger Fruit stretched that concept further in 2018, while 2020’s more immediate Wake Of A Nation EP tackled current affairs, galvanised by George Floyd’s murder. Does album number three have anything left to do?