Zeal and Ardor

Zeal & Ardor – Zeal & Ardor [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]

Zeal & Ardor – Zeal & Ardor [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]

Zeal & Ardor have always been a band of “buts” (with only one “t”!): individual songs have been great but previous albums haven’t quite coalesced into a consistent whole. The live show is fantastic but the energy is lost in the recording studio (compare the scintillating live performance of “Baphomet”—with its classic “Right hand up! Left hand down!” chorus—to the tame studio version). Their schtick of combining slave gospel with black metal is great but it’s also limited in its options and will become overdone soon. Which meant a great deal rode on their third album, Zeal & Ardor. Was the band going to fulfill its promise, or remain an interesting, if flawed, mishmash? A “but” band, if you will?” But rock.

Heavy Moves Heavy 2022 – AMG’s Ultimate Workout Playlist

Heavy Moves Heavy 2022 – AMG’s Ultimate Workout Playlist

“Four mighty contributors shaped Heavy Moves Heavy 2022. Ferox, Thus Spoke, Holdeneye, and Steel Druhm each chose the ten songs released this year that dominated our respective workouts. The resulting playlist is appended to this article. Play it straight through or set it to shuffle; HMH is designed to work either way.” Go heavy because there is no going home.

Zeal and Ardor – Stranger Fruit Review

Zeal and Ardor – Stranger Fruit Review

“It takes a lot to excite and intrigue jaded metalheads like me. As our recent expose demonstrated, we here at Angry Metal Guy Hype-Deflating Industries LTD. have become harder and harder to impress over the years, to the point where we keep our superlatives locked in a gun safe which requires written permission to be opened. Nevertheless, Zeal and Ardor’s debut, Devil is Fine piqued quite a few of us with its bizarre split personality and penchant for hooks. The follow-up to that Bandcamp smash-hit, Stranger Fruit has been anxiously anticipated here, where in our best hopes we imagined an album just as catchy and eclectic but more focused and complex.” Fruits and regrets.

Devilish Impressions – The I Review

Devilish Impressions – The I Review

“Before reading this here review, do me a huge and grab your nearest dictionary. Go on, I’m a patient man-cat. Scroll to the letter ‘E’ and look up the word “experimental” for me. ‘Experimental,’ by definition, relates to ideas never been used before, or lands never traversed prior. It means that whatever this amalgamation is, it’s something truly hasn’t been done before. It’s tough to pull off in metal music, but it does happen. So when the word ‘experimental’ (and next-of-kin descriptive noun ‘individualistic’) gets thrown about in a one-sheet promo PDF, the hairs on my neck stand on end.” Pavlovian neck hairs?

Desecrate the Faith – Unholy Infestation Review

Desecrate the Faith – Unholy Infestation Review

“There is nothing special about this record. No mind-boggling solos, no affecting melodies, not a whiff of progressive ideas or grand concepts. What it does have is everything a brutal album needs: riffs, hatred, and a conspicuous lack of snare dampening. To put it simply, Desecrate the Faith sound like a grittier version of Aborted or Benighted.” And sometimes that’s enough, dammit!

Zeal and Ardor – Devil is Fine [Things You Might Have Missed 2016]

Zeal and Ardor – Devil is Fine [Things You Might Have Missed 2016]

“It’s about time we got to this. Since its release in April, Devil is Fine has exploded in popularity and earned accolades and interviews across the web, based on, as far as I can tell, little to no promotion from the artist. It has sold over 1000 copies on Bandcamp. But the album’s worth as a success story is just the beginning and even its contents don’t quite tell the whole tale.” This is a weird one.

EP Edition [Things You Might Have Missed 2016]

EP Edition [Things You Might Have Missed 2016]

“Another year, another influx of new readers and writers at this mighty blog. Yet compared to those previously, this year has seen a significant growth in the consistency of our posts. A sad consequence of this is that EPs have increasingly fallen by the wayside as reviews of shitty full-length albums are summarily assigned to the probationary writers with reckless abandon.” We fixed the glitch.