Zeal & Ardor

Zeal & Ardor, the brainchild of Swiss biracial vocalist and guitarist Manuel Gagneux (at the time based in New York but later relocated in Switzerland), mixed black metal with blues and plantation songs on the demo mini-album Zeal and Ardor (2014). The idea was further explored on the solo mini-album Devil Is Fine (2016). The plantation laments Devil Is Fine and Blood in the River steal the show, but even better are the visceral voodoo-tinged In Ashes and the melodic and electrifying Come on Down (with an organ loop worthy of Ray Manzarek). The brief album also includes instrumentals that point in completely different directions, like a syncopated hip-hop beat in Sacrileguim I.

The project became a duo with drummer Marco Von Allmen (and Gagneux playing also synth) for the 16-song Stranger Fruit (2018), with a broader range of stylistic appropriations. where mythological Viking pathos meets the pathos of African slaves black metal contaminated with spiritual in Gravedigger's Chant, gospel in the more magniloquent Servants (a cross between Nick Cave and Joan Jett), with blues in Don't You Dare, with rockabilly and gospel in Row Row There's also the pure senseless Satanic violence of Waste, the gothic piano and distortion lament Stranger Fruit and several "ambient" intermezzi.

After the political tirades of the six-song EP Wake of a Nation (2020), with the arena ballad of Vigil, the metalcore rant of Tuskegee and the tribal hip-hop war song Wake of a Nation, the more professional Zeal & Ardor (2022) greatly hurt the band. Songs like Erase, I Caught You and Run, armed with grand guitar riffs and emphatic melodies, aim for mainstream acceptance by the fans of the Slipknot generation. Church Burns is stoner-rock for the masses. The atmospheric elegy Golden Liar with its melodramatic crescendo would be more appropriate on a Bon Jovi album. There is a gospel core in Death to the Holy and there is a blues core in Hold Your Head Low, but neither sparks like their crossovers used to.