Zabus – ‘Automatic Writhing’ [Album Review]

Avant-garde/psych-rock/post-punk collective Zabus, featuring former members of Gorazde and Zero Swann, released their second long player, Automatic Writhing, near the end of 2024. It’s a weird and wonderful album.

Talking about the album, the band says, “Through technological advancement at the expense of conscious enlightenment, we create our own false plane of escape, opening the door for lower vibrational entities to feed on our psychopathy and manipulate us through exploiting our vulnerabilities and weaknesses. This residue infests and chains us to our current hell—this dimension of physical earth. Simply, our conscious choices (enlightenment or devolution) can destroy or pave the path to future dystopia.”

Formed in 2023, Zabus, the creation of Jeremy Moore (vocals, guitars, 6-string bass, synthesis), is a collective with a rotating cast of musicians, At the present time, the collective includes Alex Zorn (guitars), Johnny Wielding (drums, 4-string bass, percussion), and Akane Shimizu (strings, synthesis).

Moore’s eerily haunting vocals conjure up suggestions of Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan crossed with Jim Morrison, resulting in a mysterious, suspended quality somewhere between spoken and sung. The effect borders on the hypnotic.

“Truth Table” opens the album, setting the motif, the sonic tableau of Zabus’ sound – evoking the feeling of residing in a surreal, migratory dreamscape that’s simultaneously stochastic and fractal. The melody drifts fluidly, like the merging of Pink Floyd and Deftones.

Of the dozen tracks on Automatic Writhing, favourites include “Wasp” because of its syncopated percussion and floating, luminous guitars. Moore’s chanting vocals summon whispers of mystical incantations.

“Subculture” takes on even darker colors as well as a portentous feeling of spectral instability. Whereas the intro to “The Black River” reveals classical elements that then alter to hovering, ghostly textures.

Dual layers of harmonics, one shimmering and trembling with restless colors, the other deep and throbbing, give the closing track, “Intercession,” moody tension, as if petitioning some unknown god for relief.

Profoundly experimental and saturated in proximate context, Automatic Writhing breaks open the ears and heads of listeners.

Zabus, photo courtesy of artist

Automatic Writhing Track Listing:

1. Truth Table
2. Phantom Lens
3. Wasp
4. Night Of Broken Glass
5. Grafhysi Fyrir Alla
6. Subculture
7. Exformative Dominion
8, The Black River
9. Surrogate
10. No Sound Like Progress
11. Orphalese
12. Intercession

Run Time: 43:20
Release Date: September 23, 2024
Record Label: Saccharine Underground