We all want something better, bright and shiny dust.
Fake names to hide within, blind among the rust
Northeastern Pennsylvania has always seemed peculiarly suited to its own species of Gothic, where abandoned coal mines, crumbling factories, old churches, and stubborn little towns exist in uneasy communion with the American Dream. There is something metaphysically peculiar about a landscape whose prosperity was excavated from beneath its own feet, leaving the earth hollow and its inhabitants contemplating what remains. Here, the Gothic requires neither medieval castles nor European aristocrats. It grows naturally from industrial decay, Catholic guilt, Appalachian folklore, and the peculiar American talent for building civilizations atop buried disasters. Under such circumstances, making strange, sinister music seems less like an artistic decision than a perfectly reasonable response to one’s surroundings.
Which brings us to ZEU, pronounced “zoo,” the musical alter ego of Matthew Zedolik of Wilkes-Barre, who has apparently decided that the region’s accumulated ghosts could use a backing band. There are few things more dangerous to public decency than a man left alone in a recording studio with a guitar, a head full of questionable ideas, and absolutely nobody around to tell him when to stop. Sometimes the result is genius. Zedolik writes, plays, records, and produces everything himself, an arrangement capable of yielding either magnificent obsession or twelve tracks of a man arguing with his presets. Fortunately, he seems to have made peace with his machinery, although his relationship with the rest of civilization remains questionable.
Zedolik describes his approach as “’80s-era Springsteen meets Billy Idol, Depeche Mode, and Sisters of Mercy.” Which sounds like a barroom dare issued after somebody fed the jukebox three dollars and locked all the exits. Imagine the Boss borrowing Andrew Eldritch’s wardrobe, Billy Idol stealing the getaway car, and Martin Gore sitting in the back seat contemplating several regrettable romantic decisions.
On Blind Among The Rust and Beyond Life and Death, ZEU takes that peculiar family reunion somewhere considerably less respectable. The songs inhabit the cracked asphalt between Tom Waits and The Gun Club, with the skeletal guitar menace of Rowland S. Howard and the diseased theatrical instincts of Foetus lurking nearby. There is something wonderfully disreputable about the combination, a species of surf goth that sounds as though somebody dragged a rockabilly band through a cemetery and subsequently denied them access to decent amplifiers.
Zedolik’s growling vocals come crawling out of the arrangements with the nicotine-stained authority of a man who has seen the bottom of several bottles and found the conversation there surprisingly agreeable. Echoing guitars suggest desert highways, abandoned dance halls, and the occasional questionable roadside establishment, while atmospheric synthesizers introduce an industrial chill. Beneath the Gothic furnishings sits a garage-rock impulse, loose enough to suggest spontaneous combustion and sufficiently disciplined to keep the songs from collapsing into glorious nonsense.
His musical education explains some of this strange chemistry. Teenage metal bands supplied the muscle; The Ordinals taught him bass discipline; American Buffalo Ghost gave him considerable guitar mileage. Recording studies in New York subsequently sharpened his understanding of arrangement and spatial dynamics. The accumulated experience gives these recordings their peculiar sense of purpose, even when the music appears headed toward some spectacularly unpleasant destination.
Listen below:
Following July’s full-length Existor, these two singles, released through Everything Evaporated, suggest an artist increasingly comfortable inhabiting his own peculiar corner of Pennsylvania Gothic. Somewhere between the last call at a roadside tavern and the first light over a neglected graveyard, ZEU has found a promising place to conduct his business. The neighbours may have complaints.
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The post ZEU Turns Industrial Decay into Coal-Stained Gothic Rock on “Blind Among the Rust” and “Beyond Life and Death” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
