01/10/25

Stigma

Zeni Geva is one of my favorite bands.

I first heard their track "I Want You" by chance on auto-play. It was like a drone metal that was actually engaging. The album art, a cartoon of an anthropomorphic cow being disemboweled, featured a row of Kanji in its margin. They were a Japanese band, also. In effect, this was probably my first exposure to Japan's rich experimental music scene (we'll probably talk more about that later). And it was a good way in.

The band themselves call it "progressive-hardcore." In that way, the basic songwriting is utilitarian. Metal's skin is pared of romantic flourishes for the internal: the representative, crushing substance. The result is efficient, monotonous agonism, songs that are based on good ideas at the onset. Thereafter, somehow focused belligerence is both doubled-down on (paring), and also colored by gestural flourishes estranged from blues ancestry. It's like peeling an apple, and dipping it in something other than caramel.

I think multiple things of note can be pulled from this combination. Nothing here is annoyingly showy or flowery, for one. You will not be getting any three-minute guitar solos. If anything, the great balance is between Mitsuru Tabata and Kazuyuki Kishino as "lead" and "rhythm" guitarist respectively, to the extent that they share a self-defined obligation to the rhythm. That's right, here is a band where both guitarists and the drummer, even, are all moving in parallel with each other.

Regardless, add some electronic and harsh noise elements, supplement a bass for a low-end guitar (Kishino), and add guttural shouting to the mix, and this is what you get: a scathing, primal reduction of extreme music into some of its purest expressions. It kinda reminds me of early Swans, but a bit more agitated and less erotic, less self-loathing.

Their albums Desire For Agony, Freedom Bondage, and Maximum Money Monster are the ones I'd recommend the most (in no particular order). Having listened to all of their records available on streaming, I can't say there's any I dislike, even if there are some lulls here and there. If any of this sounds interesting, or if you liked any of the music posted on this page, I'd encourage you to check them out.

As one last sorta fun story, let me tell you about my extended search for a Zeni Geva t-shirt. As far as I know, official merchandise was available in the past, though is no longer. I typically have reservations about buying unofficial merch in general, but even that was hardly an option this time. With exception to a few Aliexpress pages, such a thing was absent on the internet. The end result of that endeavor is worn on my wall* (*see bottom left).

Having found no way of acquiring any material representation for this group (other than cds), I had to accept that I would never wear a badass Zeni Geva shirt and think about how cool I looked. Yeah, or so I thought.

They sometimes have t-shirt booths at county fairs. You can pay $40 to have them press an image and airbrush a design onto a plain white tee. And so--lacking a better option--that's what I did* (*see bottom right).

I'd recommend you do the same.