Come on now. What better way is there to celebrate hump day, than popping on your favourite black band t-shirt and your tight black jeans and heading on down to Bristols’ legendary, good vibe-drenched Marble Factory to watch, listen and experience some good old-fashioned Neo-soul, avant-garde black metal, all in the form of the amazing Zeal & Ardor.
Coming into fruition in 2013 originally as a solo project for the Swiss-born vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Manuel Gagneux, the band slowly, surely and certainly began to gain quite a bit of attention from the masses. The first album from the band was a solo effort by Gagneux himself, playing all instruments and doing all the drum programming, whereas albums 2 and 3 drummer Marco Von Allmen was added and 2024’s album ‘Grief’ is the first album recorded with a full band line-up and not just Galneux and Von Allmen. The band now consists of Manuel Gagneux on vocals, guitars, and keyboards, Tiziano Volante on guitar, Lukas Kurmann on Bass, Marco Von Allmen on drums and Dennis Wagner and Marc Obrist both on backing vocals.
The band have travelled the world playing their very different and extremely captivating style of music for some years now and has toured with some very big names such as Deafheaven, Meshuggah and Opeth, to name but a few. But enough about the band; let’s dive straight into the night with the mighty Zeal & Ardor.
The time is 20:45 when the lights drop, covering the eager crowd in an eerie darkness, the fog machines bellowing out a horror movie amount of fog, and then a steady blue light arises on the stage as the opening track from 2024’s ‘Grief’ begins to play over the PA. The band make their appearance on stage, all members wearing large, baggy black robes, hoods up and looking like a ritual is imminent. From the intro track, the band swiftly moved into ‘Wake of a nation’ before thundering into a crowd favourite and one of my personal favourites, the catchy but brutal as all hell ‘Gotterdammerung’ which of course the Bristol crowd responded to with immense head banging, jumping and all that other fun time metal show stuff.
The band played 21 songs in total, which I find astonishing considering the crazy energy that was expelled from themselves, with bassist Lukas Kurmann spinning in circles, guitarist Tiziana Volante jumping and dancing, drummer Marco Von Allmen just absolutely smashing all hell out of the kit with little room for a breather and backing vocalists Dennis Wagner and Marc Obrist never stopped moving, so how they managed the phenomenal in key harmonies and screams along with Gagneux is awe-inspiring.
With a 21-song setlist, there really wasn’t a huge amount of time for speaking between songs, but when Gagneux did talk to the crowd, he had a truly sincere and thankful approach to us all in attendance, even thanking us all for existing and thriving.
They went on to play songs from all albums and EPs, so we were truly spoilt with absolute killer tracks such as ‘Blood in the River’ ’Tuskegee’ ‘Row Row’ ‘At the Seams’ and I am again massively happy that they played the songs ‘Death to the Holy’ and ‘Devil is Fine’ in succession as both songs are just perfection to myself and it seemed that way to everyone in the building too. The band exited the stage just after the latter song, only to return to treat us all to a few more songs.
For the 5 song encore, they played us ‘Trust no One’ ‘At the Seams’ ‘Don’t You Dare’ ‘I Caught You’ and ended the night with the searing, harsh track from the latest album ‘Clawing out’ before all members took to the front of the stage to take a bow to the hot, sweaty and impressed Bristol audience.
I strongly urge people to go out and experience Zeal & Ardor in a live setting. Their albums are stunning but live is just a whole new entity, truly.
I am a self taught Photographer and an aspiring reviewer.
I have been in and out of bands for the past 15 years and some, so thought it only makes sense to stay in the scene that has been the most important aspect of my life since I can remember, live music.
Available for:
I am available for small gigs, larger concerts, recording sessions and festivals.
First attended gig:
The first proper gig that went to that I can actually remember was Muse supported by a then lesser known Elbow and I think the main reason I remember that is because it was the first big concert that I was allowed to go to with just my friends. Obviously Muse were fantastic by the way.
First gig shot:
Im pretty sure the first gig I shot was for a friends band at a local social club with some sort of £30 Argos camera. You can only imagine the fantastic quality of the shots.
Dream gig:
My dream gig to shoot would most definitely be either Tool, not just because they are amazing but their stage and lighting is magnificent. Or I would love to shoot another one of my favourite bands which is Explosions In The Sky and that’s just because they are incredible.
