No Clean Singing is now streaming A Wilderness Left Untamed, the second album by Portland, Maine-based metal cult ZUD. The band will release the CD independently this week as they make their return to Shadow Woods Metal Fest.
No Clean Singing is hosting an early stream of the album, alongside a massive dissection of the album, noting in part, “ZUD‘s A Wilderness Left Untamed is a big album, and not just in its nearly hour-long length. It’s brimming with ideas and bursting with energy. It’s fiendishly clever, but never comes off as calculating or manipulative. It’s ambitious, but not in the sense that, in the case of some other bands, could mean overreaching or even pretentious. It’s just hugely effective in tapping into primal urges in the untamed way that the best of the devil’s music always does, and it does that in very distinctive fashion.”
Explore ZUD’s soaring A Wilderness Left Untamed RIGHT HERE.
ZUD declares ahead of the album’s release this week, “I don’t think any of us expected upon re-forming ZUD, for what was to be one show, that two years later it would lead to the release of A Wilderness Left Untamed. But through a series of highly unexpected twists and turns, here we are and this album in its creation has taken the four of us down some pretty insanely hilarious roads. Though the songs in general are a bit shorter and there are more of them, the album is more diverse. There is a bit more depth to everything and despite that this will likely be the moment at which by some is looked back at as ‘when ZUD tried to sell out.’ The sound is clearly still very obviously that of ZUD. In a way, much more so than the last album. A Wilderness Left Untamed reflects in many ways the idea of coming to terms with various fears we go through in life and furthermore the idea of not being afraid to jump off the various cliffs we all encounter, no matter what the consequences may be. To not be afraid to break down walls and barriers, including the very ones which most black metal purists seem to blindly hind behind. To acknowledge the impermanence of everything around us while at the same time knowing that life is very short and when approached from a certain perspective; no matter how short may be, it can be a wild fucking ride.”
A Wilderness Left Untamed was engineered and mixed by Todd Hutchisen (East Of The Wall, Falls Of Rauros) at Acadia Recording Co in Portland, Maine, and mastered by Carl Saff (Grails, RVIVR, Unsane) in Chicago, Illinois.
With the digital release of the album to follow in the coming weeks, ZUD will self-release A Wilderness Left Untamed on CD this week in honor of their return to once again close out Shadow Woods Metal Fest in White Hall, Maryland, joining the likes of Vastum, Panopticon, Withered, Woe, Castle, Dead In The Manger, and many others. Additional ZUD tour dates and more band updates to be announced in the months ahead.
ZUD Live:
9/16/2017 Shadow Woods Metal Fest – White Hall, MD [info]
Since the release of ZUD‘s 2013 debut, The Good, The Bad And The Damned, the band’s ability to seamlessly blend the likes of Necrovore, old Bathory, and old Mayhem, with that of Roky Erickson, Van Halen, Blue Öyster Cult, and even Heart has been heralded one of the most unique approaches to black metal in years. Regarded as a sound that distinctly stands apart from the so-called genre of “black’n’roll,” ZUD has proven both live and on record that while always keeping the nods to those who cut the original trails in plain sight, they forge a path that is truly their own.
With A Wilderness Left Untamed, ZUD continues this journey with ten new tracks, clocking in with an hour of new material… a journey which will take the listener on a ride from one end of the rock’n’roll universe to another, full of surprises and unexpected turns, all the while distinctly always very clearly recognizable as the output of ZUD. Be it with first-wave black metal, surf, sappy ’80s pop, NWOBHM, classic rock, garage, or psyche of the ’60s and ’70s, hardcore of the late ’90s, or somehow everything at once, A Wilderness Untamed is an album which may trigger memories the listener may not have realized they’d had. ZUD traverses an insanely hilarious emotional roller coaster ride through the dark subconscious in a chaotic world, trying to make sense of it all, wondering what the point is, always remembering that though there is no argument in that “only death is real” …. Here we are and life is short, so what the fuck?
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