Zeal & Ardor, Club Bahnhof Ehrenfeld, gig review: Black chain gang metal proves intoxicating in a live setting

Considering its relatively modest size, Cologne is a city where rock music thrives in Germany, a hub on the westerly edge of the country where fans congregate from nearby Dortmund, Düsseldorf and Düren in order to witness the latest sounds to emerge from the metal underground. Zeal & Ardor have caused ripples of late in the murky waters of extreme music, with an unprecedented consolidation of chain-gang songs, Delta blues, African-American spiritualism and Satanic black metal.

Masterminded by Swiss/American one man music amalgamator Manuel Gagneux, it’s fair to say that few would have predicted the rapid rise of such an esoteric project, including the ever-humble Gagneux himself, for whom Zeal & Ardor was merely the latest in a long line of experiments combining two seemingly disjointed genres in the comfort of his own home. Word of mouth and fan-generated hype has propelled the project far beyond the four walls of Gagneux’s bedroom and thank Lucifer for that. Zeal & Ardor is very much the product of experimentation, an idea that would never have been given the opportunity to bloom in the days where expensive recording studios and the record labels which held the keys to such facilities were an impediment to creativity.

Tonight marks Zeal & Ardor’s debut live appearance in Cologne and only their 33rd show to date, after Gagneux hastily put together a six-piece touring band to flesh out the music from 2016’s debut ‘Devil is Fine’ at the beginning of this year. To steal an adjective from the album’s title, it is a fine record, one that introduces this unusual hybrid to the world admirably and hints at the potential that could be unearthed from it in the future. There are however, two main over-riding faults with it; a) at just 25 minutes in length and 9 songs (3 of which would more accurately be described as instrumental interludes) ‘Devil is Fine’ is truthfully more EP than LP and b) the black metal elements, as played by Gagneux alone on record, don’t quite hit the heights of modern heavy-hitters of the genre (e.g. Behemoth, Wolves in the Throne Room, Watain etc).

Thankfully, both of these problems are rendered null and void in a live setting; well aware that the band would likely be lynched if they were to simply trot out a mere 25 minutes worth of music (for a headline show at least), Zeal & Ardor have wisely spent much of 2017 writing new material and judging from this evening’s performance, a hell of a lot of it as well. Of the 15 songs aired tonight, 8 of them have yet to be set to (digital) tape; most pleasing of all, it is the new songs that provide the majority of the set's highlights.

"We Never Fall" has a swagger that sounds as if Stone Temple Pilots and Mayhem got double-booked into the same rehearsal space but decided to make the most of it by writing a song together anyway. "Row Row" employs the directness of nursery-rhyme couplets, before descending into nightmare-ish darkness and depravity, all the while riding on a filthy funky offbeat bass line. "Don’t You Dare", a new song saved for the penultimate spot in the set, showcases Gagneux’s extraordinary ability to captivate an audience, switching from soulful crooner to manic-eyed preacher in the blink of an eye. His ability to mimic James Brown one moment, Nick Cave the next and (as if that weren’t enough) Nocturno Culto after that is truly something to behold – even the most hardened cynic would have to concede that he is a vocalist of extraordinary ability.

But it would be remiss not to pay any attention to the musicians that have been brought together for Zeal & Ardor’s live band. Supporting vocalists Denis Wagner and Marc Obrist provide astounding note-perfect harmonies and increase the menacing tension emanating from the stage by flanking Gagneux throughout. The instrumental triage of Tiziano Volante (guitar), Mia Rafaela Dieu (bass) and Marco Von Allmen (drums) give the songs from ‘Devil is Fine’ the added weight and magnitude that is lacking from their recorded counterparts.

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Of that album’s songs, “Blood in the River” is remarkable and the title track provides the Satan-summoning-sing-along that one would expect from such an infectious melody. But it is “Children’s Summon” that provides the undoubted highlight of the ‘Devil is Fine’ material, a frenetic audio assault with frantic guitar notes and blastbeats as its weapon that would recall Dragonforce if they stopped piddling about with high-camp histrionics and added some actual menace to their sound.

Those that are critics of Zeal & Ardor and fans of jumping the gun tend to accuse the band of being a one-trick pony (even if they fail to see that it is a pretty extraordinary trick!) Based on this evening’s performance and the new material in particular, Gagneux’s band of merry satanic men (and woman) have every chance of proving the naysayers wrong once they drop a second Zeal & Ardor record sometime in 2018. If the new material showcased this evening had been poor, it would be easy to dismiss Zeal & Ardor as a mere flash in the pan. The fact that the majority of it sounds better than the songs from ‘Devil is Fine’ is proof that Gagneux’s experiment could be the latest in a long line of innovations in extreme music.