For 23 years, Zombi’s Anthony Paterra and Steve Moore have taken us into the deep, dark tunnels that are filled with the worlds of film scores, progressive rock, and synthesised territories that have triggered an unexpected wonder, never knowing what they’ll think of next. That and their seventh release Direct Inject blend the movies inside our heads. Whether its film-noir, horror, science-fiction, or a dystopian city that’s on the brink of collapse, it’s all there.
Taking their aspects between Jerry Goldsmith’s score of the first two Gremlins movies, John Carpenter, Goblin who they toured with, King Crimson, and Genesis, Zombi pull no punches with their new album on the Relapse label. Take for example, the opening title-track, ‘Insurmountable Odds’, ‘Improvise Adapt Overcome’, and ‘Bodies in the Flotsam’, it carries the ‘80s sound of Rush’s bass and synth structures which speaks of the Signals and Moving Pictures-era to a warm and terrifying beginning.
‘Kamichi & Sandy’ is a pounding yet clock-ticking momentum aiming at the sound of the landscape of Japan in all of its glory with a futuristic atmosphere while ‘The Post-Atomic Horror’ is their tip of the hat to the THRAK-era of King Crimson. Zombi knows those sinister sounds and evil lurking behind closed doors. You never know what will happen next,. Because the devil, he has his cards underneath his sleeve, trying to do unimaginable things to you.
The bass lines on ‘So Mote It Be’ sends you into this hallway of mirrors, reflecting the terror that’s about to unfold. The synths themselves, they are very menacing, very much like crawling up your spine. There’s something Tchaikovsky about this track as they tackle themes of the ‘Arabian Dance’ from the Nutcracker suite which comes to mind, but also themes of Marillion’s ‘She Chameleon’ thrown into the mix.
And once those two are blended in, it becomes a slithering texture near the end. Direct Inject is Zombi’s answer to the battle of the gods, duking it out with mind-blowing forces coming out of the salty oceans below, ready to reign terror throughout our entire universe. And it’s an adventure you will never forget.
