Zatokrev – The Bat, The Wheel, And The Long Road To Nowhere (Candlelight Records)
Relying too heavily on hyper-specificity regarding genre terminology can be tiring and constricting, both for those applying the labels and those using them to sort through the ever-growing piles of music out there. And I get it, nobody wants their sweat and blood, the distillation of all their soul’s depths, to be encapsulated by some hyphenated combination of stylistic signifiers (or worse yet, prefaced by “post-”)–but these words do carry weight.
Zatokrev – The Bat, The Wheel, And The Long Road To Nowhere (Candlelight Records)
Relying too heavily on hyper-specificity regarding genre terminology can be tiring and constricting, both for those applying the labels and those using them to sort through the ever-growing piles of music out there. And I get it, nobody wants their sweat and blood, the distillation of all their soul’s depths, to be encapsulated by some hyphenated combination of stylistic signifiers (or worse yet, prefaced by “post-”)–but these words do carry weight. So when I read multiple descriptions of a band like Zatokrev, both self-applied and otherwise, that refer to it as “sludge,” “doom,” or “death/doom,” it strikes me as strange, primarily because the band’s most recent album The Bat, The Wheel, And The Long Road To Nowhere just isn’t really that at all.
I can sort of understand applying that sort of appellation, as Zatokrev isn’t un-heavy, and there’s certainly some gloom to their music, but beyond that what the band is doing is in a whole different field altogether. It’s greatly to their favor that summing their music up at all is a difficult task. The bulk of it is reminiscent of certain more progressively minded early-aughts hardcore bands (Buried Inside, late Majority Rule), except slowed to an insistent mid-tempo trudge, though rarely one that loses its rhythmic drive to straight dirge tendencies. Even this is only part of the equation, however, as the band offers a take on the style that’s expansive and manages to incorporate enough stylistic left turns to remain interesting. Eerie melodic background vocals in “Goddamn Lights” accentuate vocalist Frederyk Rotter’s visceral howl, slippery slide guitar emerges from the distorted tangle of “9” to end the song on a triumphant note, and the disorienting, percussion-free middle section of “Medium” juxtaposes billowing sheets of feedback and quasi-black metal shrieks with loose guitar figures that suggest a dark melodicism, while rarely indulging in it outright.
Zatokrev’s real aptitutde, however, is making these detours seem like natural parts of the songs, rather than as variety for its own sake. The album’s component elements join together in a cohesive whole that ebbs and flows, building and scaling back intensity and preventing the material from remaining static. Despite the clever entwining of disparate elements, however, The Bat… could perhaps have benefitted from a heightened emphasis on concision. While none of the songs are bad at all, the majority hover around the ten-minute mark, which in and of itself could exhaust a casual listener–especially when combined into an hour-plus running time.
But there’s enough solid material present on The Bat… that Zatokrev have shown themselves to be a promising band. Though their music isn’t without precedent, it’s still interesting enough to warrant repeat listens and to prevent it from being neatly categorized into all but the broadest of classifications. And though the occasional element could benefit from some slight improvements, the band has demonstrated that, with a little tightening up, their mix of accessible elements and unconventional tendencies could likely help to push heavier music into directions where labels become moot.
