4 out of 5

Label: Ipecac

Produced by: Lorenzo Stecconi (recorded by)

Punishing.  As I began listening to ‘Cortar Todo,’ after some opening ambient noise stuff, that guttural blast of sax hits and I think: alright, here’s Zu, and I wait for the jazz / metal freak-outs to explode a la Carboniferous.  And I waited.  Some time passed, and my ears maybe tuned out.  They check in a little later and still hear that sax and some chugging guitars, so I know it’s still Zu, but somehow I must’ve missed the freak-out part?  So I continue waiting.  Until there’s this shriek of feedback on closer Pantokrator that has me pulling the headphones from my ears – seriously, this bit must be mastered louder than the rest of the disc – and sputtering with a bit of frustration and what I’m listening to (or haven’t been listening to), and put the headphones back in when the sound has ceased.  But what’s this?  The album seems to loop around (if you have it on repeat, which is how I always listen to things) on that ambient noise, book-ending the album, and so we’re back to the start.  Something’s going on here, because Zu would seem to want me to keep playing this disc for some reason.  I give it another go.

This time, some moments are sticking out: opener ‘The Unseen War’ does eventually burst out into a recognizable squall, and tracks like ‘A Sky Burial’ is closer to the Zu of yore; ‘Conflict Acceleration’ is the mash-up of Cortar’s sludgy style with the latter.  But still, there’s an awful lot of chugga-chugga on the disc, seemingly staccato drumming just keeping pace with a stoner-paced riff, and whatever the group is up to… I think I’m bored by it.  Not dismissively bored, exactly, as this is a precise band who’ve dropped almost 20 releases in 15 years, and a lot of those are collabo experiments.  It dawns on me with that thought that a lot of those collabo experiments are similar experiences to Cortar: you recognize the band but must learn to listen to it with new ears, as the group truly shifts their approach based on whom they’re working with.  And reading up about Cortar, the group lost drumer Jacopo Battaglia prior to the album, who was a huge draw for us instrumental noise hounds with his octopus-on-crack skin-smashing abilities, replacing him with hardcore guy Gabe Serbian.  So – this isn’t a collabo, but it’s still an experience to be had with new ears, as this learned band knows not to just act like old Zu, but instead to reinvent themselves around the new paradigm of their roster.  Let’s let the disc repeat again, then.

Finally, the sound of the album starts to emerge.  And it starts to land.  And you’re wondering how it possibly took you so long to hear it.

‘Cortar Todo’ is a challenge.  It’s punishing at times, falling back quite often on that sludgy riffing, which Lorenzo Stecconi’s production refuses to toy with and leaves mixed at the same levels as the guitars and bass (perhaps taking notes from previous producer Steve Albini’s often flat, “live” production), giving stretches of the album an almost drone effect.  But it’s also the group pushing themselves (and their listener) to dismiss expectations, because all of a sudden, every track bursts out into greatness, and those drone moments become necessary breathers between awesome headbanging madness.  Serbian is not Battaglia but he can certainly work his instrument like a madman, and you’ll forget all about the previous drummer when the title track is in full swing or ‘Vantablack Vomitorium’ starts smashing you over the head.  ‘Cortar’ perhaps only embraces jazz in the free-jazz spirit of controlled experimentation; it is definitely the most ‘metal’ of Zu discs to date, but it is undeniably the band…  And one of the characteristics of the band is how in charge they are of how they’d like to be heard.  The album forces you to hear it in its own way, at paces, deliberately.  It’s fascinating how what, at one point, bores, transforms into a non-stop shuffle after several go-rounds, making the mid-album break of Serpens Cauda (mostly some quiter noise experimentation) a necessity and that ear-rattling blast I mentioned in closer Pantokrator like an alarm to warn you that things are coming to a close.  But yes, it’s a challenge, and one that you must step to in order to reap the benefits… unless you’re a smarter listener than m’self, and got this from the get-go.

Having thus proven that the force of Zu will go on despite the shake-up to the combatants, I’m once again eager to see where things go (and how they’ll change) from here.