Back in January, we interviewed Mika André, the bass player for one of our favorite French metal bands, Eryn Non Dae. We asked him to recommend some other French bands we might not have heard about, and one of the names he gave us was Zubrowska. At that time we were able to hear a handful of songs Zubrowska had recorded for a forthcoming album. We really liked what we heard, and wrote about it here.
Yesterday, we got a message from Zubrowska’s talented guitarist Jon Rauzy with some news we want to pass along: The band has now made the entire new album (Zubrowska Are Dead) available for streaming at this location. The album is still not officially released — that will happen in September — but at that same location you can pre-order it now. It will be distributed in the U.S. by Debello Records and in Europe by the band’s own label, Bollocks Records (nice name, huh?).
Those songs we heard in January were sweet — and so are the rest of the songs you can now stream. Some quick impressions follow after the jump, plus one of the songs for you to hear without leaving NCS . . .
The music on Zubrowska Are Dead is difficult to categorize. It’s like an intense three-way orgy of hardcore, progressive, and technical death metal. Julien “Nutz” Deyres shrieks like a maniac (reminiscent of Converge’s Jacob Bannon) but also hits some gut-rumbling death-metal lows, spits out hardcore yowls, and even provides snatches of decent clean singing. It’s a cool juxtaposition of styles.
The instrumental work is complex and skillful, sometimes discordant and blistering, with off-kilter time signatures, and at other times dense and atmospheric (as on parts of the purely instrumental tracks “solitude” and “the memorial part II”).
High-speed rhythms verging on grindcore compete with mid-tempo tech-death. Freaked-out viciousness battles with dark meditation. Barely controlled noise rock is laced with seams of progginess. Like we said, it’s hard to wrap up this album in a neat package — there are too many writhing creatures trying to fight their way out of the wrapping.
Here’s a song from Zubrowska’s forthcoming album to check out. But don’t stop there. Go listen to the whole album stream at this location, and then spend yo money on a pre-order!