Band:	Zeal & Ardor
Album:	Greif
Style:	Alternative metal
Release date:	August 2024
A review by:	musclassia

01. The Bird, The Lion And The Wildkin
02. Fend You Off
03. Kilonova
04. Are You The Only One Now?
05. Go Home My Friend
06. Clawing Out
07. Disease
08. 369
09. Thrill
10. Une Ville Vide
11. Sugarcoat
12. Solace
13. Hide In Shade
14. To My Ilk

It’s a project that shot to relative stardom based on the back of a (very well executed) gimmick, but Zeal & Ardor have been striving since Stranger Fruit to evolve beyond said gimmick and progress as a forward-thinking band. It’s a journey that they’re still on, but perhaps finding a little (Zeal &) harder on Greif.

The ‘4chan’ story that inspired Manuel Gagneux to try a fusion between black metal and slave spirituals has been extensively repeated over the near-decade since Devil Is Fine took the metal underground by storm. Stranger Fruit, while an accomplished successor, did show what seemed like a growing over-reliance upon a set song formula that had the potential to grow stale; however, first Wake Of A Nation and then Zeal & Ardor displayed a much-needed expansion of the project’s songwriting range, venturing more towards alternative metal alongside other experimentations. This trajectory, and Gagneux’s propensity for trialling out new ideas, is maintained on Greif, but the results feel more prone to dividing opinion this time around.

On the one hand, the need for Zeal & Ardor to unshackle itself from the oft-used template from the first two albums (call-and-response verse into black metal tremolo sequence, and back and forth) is made clear by the somewhat underwhelming nature of those tracks on Greif that stick to this formula (chiefly with “Hide In Shade”, but “Go Home My Friend” and “369” sound like redux iterations of the approach). Somewhat fitting its name, “Hide In Shade” rather lives in the shade of “Götterdämmerung” from the self-titled 2022 album, and doesn’t rival the excitement or memorability of many songs on the first couple of albums. With this being the case, it is the various other sounds on Greif that attract more attention.

In a couple of instances, those sounds include reprises of Gagneux’s electronic dalliances that have existed on Zeal & Ardor albums since the “Sacrilegium” tracks on the debut debut, but which serve as reminders of Gagneux’s older project Birdmask. The rather whimsical “Une Ville Vide” feels like a spiritual successor to the “Sacrilegium” songs and similar efforts on subsequent records, with an almost fairground-esque tone to the melodic keyboard lines above the oscillating synth base. There’s also a nice synth melody towards the end of “Go Home My Friend”.

More substantially, though, Greif features an array of different sounds that fall to varying degrees under the alternative metal and alternative rock umbrellas. With regard to how much enjoyment listeners will get out of these approaches, I suspect that each individual’s mileage may vary based on their own personal tastes. I can only write for my own tastes, so take it with however large a pinch of salt you need when I say that I find this album to be a decidedly mixed bag. To start with positives, I do rather like the opening one-two of the album; the opening whistled melody on “The Bird, The Lion And The Wildkin” is pleasantly taken on by Gagneux’s evocative vocals and understated rock instrumentation that sets an enticing tone for the record to come. This moves relatively seamlessly into “Fend You Off”, and while the Eddie Vedder-isms I pick up in Gagneux’s vocals are a bit distracting, I find that this relatively steady song strikes a good balance between simple-yet-effective heaviness and rewarding catchiness from the vocal interplay in the chorus, before a brief black metal cameo in the closing seconds.

There are songs that I like after this point, but several of them do cause reservation on my part. “Clawing Out” is possibly the heaviest song on the album, and certainly the chuggiest; on the one hand, I do enjoy the slightly off-kilter syncopation patterns of the chugs and the overall brooding vibe of the song, but conversely, the vocals (both spoken word and sung) really don’t do much positive for me, and there’s a real lack of evolution across the runtime that means the appeal wanes before its ending. Right after comes “Disease”, a quite charming alt rock song with a slow, steady tempo, catchy chorus and memorable central guitar motif, but one that also tests my own patience with the dreary spoken word verse segments with the staccato enunciation.

Dreary is also an adjective that could describe “Are You The Only One?”, a song that contrasts muted soul vocals with rather raw black metal; this contrast may gel for some listeners, but I’m struggling to click with it. A song that I don’t even want to try and click with is “Sugarcoat”, which draws from funk and nu metal among other sounds, and which I frankly find rather grating, from the vocal delivery to the squeaky guitar motifs. This song, like many on the record, is on the short side at less than 3 minutes; brief track lengths has been highlighted on previous Zeal & Ardor releases, and some might find songs on this new album to be underdeveloped, but given the sporadic nature of the writing, I find being able to move on fairly quickly from ‘misses’ in the tracklist to be a relief.

It's not all doom and gloom with Greif, and it is an album that I warmed a bit towards across the first couple of listens, but it’s also one where I find the negatives to become increasingly detrimental and grating with increased exposure. If I were to highlight standout songs on the album, aside from the aforementioned opening pair of tracks, it’s hard to look past “Solace”. From sullen beginnings as a soulful piano piece, it shifts effectively in a darker and heavier direction in the second half, and does a really good job at bringing the extreme percussion and louder guitar elements without undermining the vibe established up to that point.

Zeal & Ardor’s musical growth is something that I can respect, and some of the mixed reactions to Greif will boil down to the band moving outside of some existing fans’ musical tastes. However, even factoring that in, I do feel that there’s an excessive level of lethargy to the record, a lack of especially engaging and likeable songs, and a few too many moments that are likely to miss the mark.