I found it a bit difficult warming up to last year's debut LP by this group featuring, among others, Chris Natividad of Marbled Eye and Public Interest, as that record still struck as a bit too glassy, overindulgent and underdeveloped, severely lacking in direction and contour in an era where that's kinda symptomatic of the sad state the current wave of shoegaze-y groups is operating in. Well, i can't say that about their newest EP though, on which they've considerably sharpened the edges and reinforced the structural integrity of their compositions. Did i just say Shoegaze? Yeah that's right! There's relatively little in common here sound-wise with the slightly ethereal, dreamy post punk of the aforementioned groups. Rather, Blue Zero are distinctly channeling a certain strain from the more straightforward and direct edges of the old-timey Shoegaze spectrum with the likes of Swervedriver, Bailterspace, Pale Saints and early Ride springing to mind immediately.
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Tracklist
Liiek Myth TGRX Regulated Glueman Disposer Baby Tyler The Pressure Gonies Circuit Fatigue Sklitakling De stopper ikkje Perfil Bajo No cuela Liquid Cross Don't Think Teenage Tom Petties Teenage Thin Lizzies Missed Cues Like I Was Nothing Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops Violent Hues Power Pants I'm Not The Best The Smarthearts One on One Minot Walls
After their previous LP, though pretty fucking good already, still sounded a bit like stereotypical Berlin post punk on autopilot in some places, their second album (or third maybe, depending on what length you actually consider an LP) considerably widens their stylistic breadth and feels way more deliberately crafted and well thought through in comparison, imbuing their repetitive grooves with a heightened sense of feverish urgency while still calling to mind a number of primarily Berlin based groups like Pigeon, Pretty Hurts, Glaas, early Diät, Clock of Time or Exit Group.
The Des Moines, Iowa group already have an EP and a pretty neat first LP under their belt but i don't remember them ever ripping as hard as they do now on their sophomore album, sporting a sound that in parts feels pleasantly antiquated at this point, kinda as it these guys got stuck in a time loop around the mid-aughts to early '2010s garage punk era and they have the bottomless well of catchy-ass tunes and explosive performances to make that shit stick.
