Intervista Zeal & Ardor (Manuel Gagneux)

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Hi Manuel, how are you doing?

Good, very happy, that was one of the best audiences we’ve ever had the pleasure to play to.

Yeah, I wasn’t sure on what to expect in terms of turnout but the tent was packed, were you expecting something like that?

At 2 in the afternoon? [Laughs] No, never, we thought it would be kinda empty, but we’re happy with how things went [laughs], good surprise!

Your new album, “Stranger Fruit”, came out a couple of weeks ago. Let’s start from the very title, it references Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”, a song about the lynching of African Americans. Why this title?

Because of what’s happening in the US right now and I think to make the music that I do and not talk about that, or at least reference would be kind of dumb.

The album is your first as a full band, but only you and Marco Von Allmen took part in the recordings, how so?

Manuel: It’s just easier, it would take more time…like, Tiziano, the other guitarist would be there and I’d have to say, “Okay Tiz, play this”, and he’d play it, then maybe I’d say, “Ah no, actually like this”…it’s just easier.

Denix Wagner: And I think if you could play drums you’d record them yourself.

Manuel: I cannot [laughs].

Denix Wagner: But if you could you’d probably also record that yourself.

Manuel: I don’t know…[laughs] he’s pretty good, even if I could I’d probably call him [laughs].

Your music has been universally praised for its originality, is it hard for you to write music that basically has nothing to reference back to?

No, because if I’d make other music I’d be afraid of being compared to stuff, and like this I can actually make terrible music, but since it’s new…[laughs] I can get away with it.

Going back a few years, I read that the band started on 4chan when you took up on a user’s suggestion of fusing Black Metal and Spiritual music; did you start the project as a sort of intellectual challenge or did you mean it to be a proper band from the beginning?

Oh no, it was just a kind of a challenge, I was bored at the time and I was always taking two suggestion and I was…yeah, I did 30 or 40 different ones, all of them sounded like shit [laughs], this one sounded pretty okay so I stuck with it.

How long did it take you to decide it would become a band, to decide to keep making music in that style?

Manuel: Actually, I just recorded the first EP and put it on Bandcamp and I thought it would be it.
Then we were asked to play at Roadburn and I thought, you know, just to go there and press play on a laptop would be a terrible, terrible show [laughs], so I asked these lunatics to come with me.

Denix Wagner: Yeah, I saw him one day that and he asked me, “You know, I have this new music project, do you wanna join?”.
I said I’d think about it, maybe I’ll have time for that, and after that he came to me again and said, “You know, we have this show at Roadburn, if you wanna come…the place is still open, so…” [laughs].

Where does the name Zeal & Ardor come from?

I translated a German text to English and these two words came out…it was back when Google Translate was kinda bad, so…both of those words have Christian connotations, you’d only find them in sermons or in the Bible.
My idea was that someone reading the Bible might say, “Oh, what do these words mean?”, they Google it and they would find my shitty music [laughs], that’s the idea.

Not long after you released your first songs the project really took off and received a lot of praise by both fans and critics, when did you realise people were really into it?

I think the big “a-ha” moment was when this journalist from Vice in the US wrote about us, and shortly after that Rolling Stone magazine wrote about us.
In that moment I thought, “Okay, maybe this isn’t just a challenge, it’s actually something interesting”.

In Spiritual music Christian themes are central, so with Zeal & Ardor’s lyrics you of course go in the opposite direction; what is your personal relationship with religion and spirituality?

I grew up as an atheist, but since spirituality and religion are such a huge part of people’s life it always fascinated me, it’s kinda like fiction to me, I guess.

Not all of your songs, however, go in this “satanic” direction lyrically, especially in your new album it seemed to me that you do a social critique of some sort; can you talk me about those other lyrics?

Yeah, it was important for me to maybe comment on the current situation, but not have the music suffer for it because the worst thing you can do is having a very good political message and shitty music [laughs], it kinda kills the message, so I’m very tentative about that.
But if you want to read into it there’s the possibility to.
 

A while back you made the headlines when 8 people got their flesh branded with your logo with a red hot iron at your show. How did you get the idea, what was the thought behind it?

Well, in modern Satanism it’s pretty much, “Don’t follow people blindly”, and I think in music now people are amazed by the characters of music, rather than the music itself, so it was a kind of social experiment that went…too far 8 times [laughs a lot].
 

Were all of the 8 people branded at the same show?

No…and one of them is our guitarist…and his girlfriend [laughs].

I don’t know if you’ve seen it of heard of it, but at yesterday’s Guns N’ Roses show Slash was wearing a Zeal & Ardor t-shirt…

One day as a thank you we’ll wear his shirt [laughs].

Yeah, I guess his band has some potential, one day they could make it.

Yeah [laughs].

…how do you feel about that?

You know, I know Slash, we hung out once…I guess he just didn’t have other t-shirts laying around.
That of course is bizarre, a Rock God wearing your t-shirt, it’s strange.

As for the future, where would you like and hope to get to with the band? I mean, would you like to break in the mainstream and play arenas, would you prefer to keep it underground…?

I don’t know man, if there’s one thing I know is that I don’t know what’s gonna happen with this music.
Like, I have a career of not knowing what’s happening right now [laughs], so I think it would be a bad idea to start gambling on it.
I think we’re just gonna do shows, because we really fucking enjoy doing that, and try to survive this year, baby steps [laughs].

Davide Sciaky