ZED ‘Volume’ Album Review.

Words El Jefe.

Ball-tearing, hell-raising rock’n’roll is as welcome as free beer at Hacienda El Jefe, so news of a new LP by Bay Area band Zed was greeted with open arms. I have in my possession a couple of their earlier albums, and both kick arse, so I jumped feet first into the latest one, aptly titled Volume.

So the Bay Area has long been a breeding ground for great music and band. Blue Cheer and Jefferson Airplane, CCR, the DK’s as well as a plethora of metal and hardcore bands, so it’s in Zed’s DNA to produce great music. As with all my fave shit, Zed don’t imitate. Sure, everyone has influences, and some bands just display them more prominently than others but the bands who draw on their heroes and go on to breed their own linage always seem to me to better create great, original music, and Zed are just one of those bands.

The songs on Volume range from go for the throat rockers like opener ‘The Other Kind’ and ‘Hollow Men’, a self-confessed groovefest with some great vitriolic lyrics to ‘Take Me Home Again’, a slower number where the guys get to put their box of (dynamic) tricks to some effective use. Great solo in this tune as well!

Liquid guitar solos, and ripping power chords, a throaty, chunky bass tone and drumming that’s as sharp as a surgeons blade, and tighter than a duck’s arse mixed with Peter Sattari’s huge voice, which falls somewhere between a shriek and a roar is definitely a unique selling point for these guys. But they’re no one-trick pony. They can play like a Mongol horde charging into battle, but they also write great songs, and over the length of Volume, they show quite a few different shades but at the end of the day, they leave us with living proof of exactly what they are. An excellent dirty rock’n’roll band capable of producing excellent LP’s year in and year out!

ZED Volume, is out through Ripple Music on July 27. Pre-order now HERE.

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