ALIVE AND RISING

ZENI GEVA, getting started as a progressive / hardcore project by a founder / guitarist Kazuyuki KISHINO (aka KK Null) in 1987, can be very active and naughty as previously I've felt. This album "Alive And Rising" was my first ZENI GEVA experience (shame :P) and lots of their videos I've checked, and come to this conclusion. This deep, impulsive sound pressure tied up with heavy twin guitar chains has never been changed, despite of changes of drummers. Furthermore, the current drummer is Tatsuya YOSHIDA, a powerful drum guru, who has had massive experience under a bunch of his progressive rock projects. Let me say they cannot avoid piling up heaviness and progressiveness.

Throughout the whole album, we can be drenched in the twin guitar sounds launched by Kazuyuki and Mitsuru TABATA (he did recommend this album to me, thanks man), dread voices, and Tatsuya's drumming that can throw us into complex, magmatic rhythm Renaissance. Sometimes they remind me Speed Grindcore like Napalm Death, A. C. (The second track "Disorganization" is just the example), and sometimes Noise RIO like Musica Transonic (one of Tatsuya's projects). Their instrumental technique is beyond the words (always been frozen with astonishment), and their power can let me remain opening my mouth, with chilling knife-edged sharpness.

Anyway, back to the paragraph first I've mentioned. Guess each member should go ahead toward his own cornerstone, different from another one. Mitsuru's mentioned that they'd played progressive rock, but I wonder how Kazuyuki consider. Suppose he consider they'd played progressive hardcore (namely, hardcore tinged with progressive, not progressive seasoned with hardcore)? Their mysterious music goal can confuse me and stuff me into tough inner world. Maybe pleasant if I had nothing to think or were innocent, but various heavy chains run around my brain.

Oh, can this confusion with listening to this album be their intensive purpose against us? Then, they should be very clever, I wanna say indeed.

So... after a nine year break from recording, Zeni Geva are back with another album. Led by the living legend KK Null- who has built up a very dedicated fanbase in Japan and abroad- it is natural that an album by a band who has laid dormant for nine years would be met with quite a bit of anticipation. Although I was not even aware of the band at the time they came out with this comeback, I can imagine that listeners may have been a little disappointed by what they had apparently waited nearly a decade for. It is not so much that the music here is much different from what they had done back in their day; quite the opposite, actually. Although this is clearly marketed as a comeback record of sorts, this is merely a re- recording of purely old material from older albums. My heart goes out to anyone who was excited for a new Zeni Geva album to come out.

Zeni Geva decided to take songs from all over their discography, recording them again and giving it a shiny new album cover. Really, the songs here are some of the best that Zeni Geva did back in the day, so for all intents and purposes, 'Alive And Rising' can be considered a best-of album. For what its worth, the new recording of these tracks gives them a slightly new dimension, although don't expect any sort of modern production here. This is still a very lo-fi Zeni Geva, and I would even say that the vocals have an even muddier production here than they ever have. The instrumentation (being the guitars and especially the drums) have been nicely improved on here though. The music is a noisy blend of sludge, doom, and math rock. Ultimately, it ends up sounding alot like the schizophrenic ramblings of King Crimson, with some added heaviness.

KK Null's vocals were arguably the best thing about the band's earlier work, and I would say that the muddy recording of his vocals takes away from the album. If things sounded a little clearer on all fronts, than 'Alive And Rising' would be alot more valid as a comeback for these guys. Instead, the changes here aren't nearly as noticeable as they should have been, and as a result, 'Alive And Rising' is really only an album I could recommend to fans of the band, or perhaps someone who has never heard them before. A damned disappointing album, if even only for the fact that there is no original material here.