Zaraza
Encyclopedia
Zaraza was an experimental
/industrial
funeral doom band from Canada
.
, Canada, in early 1993, Zaraza was born out of a meeting between newly arrived Polish
immigrant Jacek (The DoomHammer) and local Montreal industrial/noise
artist Grzegorz Haus ov Doom, with the object of fully integrating the extremes of doom
/death metal
with industrial
. At the beginning it was intended to be a grindcore
-oriented project, but they soon decided on a more doomy edge, combined with a bombastic symphonic industrial feel.
Due to the largely sampler
-oriented nature of Zaraza's music, the band very rarely performed live. Its best-known live show was during a special edition of the Montreal industrial show Late Night Atrocity Exhibition. That night, in order to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the first concert of Laibach
, whose early albums (from the 1980s) the band highly revered, Zaraza performed four covers: "Vier Personen," "Leben Tod," "Krvava Gruda Plodna Zemlja," and "Nova Akropola."
After releasing their first demo, Life Is Death Postponed, in 1995, received positively in the underground, Zaraza released its debut CD, Slavic Blasphemy, through the Ottawa-based Musicus Phycus label. It was released in 1997 and gathered a large number of positive reviews, and was listed as one of the Top 10 albums of 1998 by Gino Filicetti of Chronicles of Chaos webzine.
In 1999 the band recorded their second CD, No Paradise To Lose
, which was supposed to include a bonus EP with 3 Laibach
covers. However, lack of satisfaction with the final sound quality of the mixing process led to a postponement of the album. All the original recordings were discarded and the resulting self-disgust resulted in the band going on hiatus till early 2002. The same year the band performed its one and only "true" live show by opening up for Knurl and Merzbow
in Ottawa, Canada.
In 2002, Zaraza re-started its activities and tackled again the task of re-recording and remixing the entire No Paradise To Lose album from scratch. In November 2003, No Paradise To Lose was finally released, containing 50 minutes of experimental industrial doom death metal, to many critical acclaims. The first 50 copies of the album sold also included a 4-track single of Laibach covers, "Montrealska Akropola [Tribute to Laibach]".
The band disbanded in July 2006 via an official announcement on their website. At the end of 2006, they started releasing all their albums as open source audio via archive.org.
Experimental rock
Experimental rock or avant-garde rock is a type of music based on rock which experiments with the basic elements of the genre, or which pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique....
/industrial
Industrial metal
Industrial metal is a musical genre that draws from industrial music and many different types of heavy metal, using repeating metal guitar riffs, sampling, synthesizer or sequencer lines, and distorted vocals. Founding industrial metal acts include Ministry, Godflesh, and KMFDM.Industrial metal's...
funeral doom band from Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
Biography
Formed in MontrealMontreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Canada, in early 1993, Zaraza was born out of a meeting between newly arrived Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
immigrant Jacek (The DoomHammer) and local Montreal industrial/noise
Noise music
Noise music is a term used to describe varieties of avant-garde music and sound art that may use elements such as cacophony, dissonance, atonality, noise, indeterminacy, and repetition in their realization. Noise music can feature distortion, various types of acoustically or electronically...
artist Grzegorz Haus ov Doom, with the object of fully integrating the extremes of doom
Doom metal
Doom metal is an extreme form of heavy metal music that typically uses slower tempos, low-tuned guitars and a much "thicker" or "heavier" sound than other metal genres...
/death metal
Death metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, blast beat drumming, minor keys or atonality, and complex song structures with multiple tempo changes....
with industrial
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
. At the beginning it was intended to be a grindcore
Grindcore
Grindcore is an extreme genre of music that started in the early- to mid-1980s. It draws inspiration from some of the most abrasive music genres – including death metal, industrial music, noise and the more extreme varieties of hardcore punk....
-oriented project, but they soon decided on a more doomy edge, combined with a bombastic symphonic industrial feel.
Due to the largely sampler
Sampler (musical instrument)
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...
-oriented nature of Zaraza's music, the band very rarely performed live. Its best-known live show was during a special edition of the Montreal industrial show Late Night Atrocity Exhibition. That night, in order to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the first concert of Laibach
Laibach (band)
Laibach is a Slovenian avant-garde music group associated with industrial, martial, and neo-classical musical styles. Laibach formed June 1, 1980 in Trbovlje, Slovenia . Laibach represents the music wing of the Neue Slowenische Kunst art collective, of which it was a founding member in 1984...
, whose early albums (from the 1980s) the band highly revered, Zaraza performed four covers: "Vier Personen," "Leben Tod," "Krvava Gruda Plodna Zemlja," and "Nova Akropola."
After releasing their first demo, Life Is Death Postponed, in 1995, received positively in the underground, Zaraza released its debut CD, Slavic Blasphemy, through the Ottawa-based Musicus Phycus label. It was released in 1997 and gathered a large number of positive reviews, and was listed as one of the Top 10 albums of 1998 by Gino Filicetti of Chronicles of Chaos webzine.
In 1999 the band recorded their second CD, No Paradise To Lose
No Paradise to Lose
No Paradise to Lose is Zaraza's second full-length album. It was previously recorded in 1999, but disappointed, the band scrapped and rerecorded it, to release it later in 2003. It comes packaged in a DVD case...
, which was supposed to include a bonus EP with 3 Laibach
Laibach (band)
Laibach is a Slovenian avant-garde music group associated with industrial, martial, and neo-classical musical styles. Laibach formed June 1, 1980 in Trbovlje, Slovenia . Laibach represents the music wing of the Neue Slowenische Kunst art collective, of which it was a founding member in 1984...
covers. However, lack of satisfaction with the final sound quality of the mixing process led to a postponement of the album. All the original recordings were discarded and the resulting self-disgust resulted in the band going on hiatus till early 2002. The same year the band performed its one and only "true" live show by opening up for Knurl and Merzbow
Merzbow
is the main recording name of the Japanese noise musician , born in 1956. Since 1979 he has released in excess of 350 recordings.The name "Merzbow" comes from German artist Kurt Schwitters' artwork, "Merzbau”. This was chosen to reflect Akita's dada influence and junk art aesthetic...
in Ottawa, Canada.
In 2002, Zaraza re-started its activities and tackled again the task of re-recording and remixing the entire No Paradise To Lose album from scratch. In November 2003, No Paradise To Lose was finally released, containing 50 minutes of experimental industrial doom death metal, to many critical acclaims. The first 50 copies of the album sold also included a 4-track single of Laibach covers, "Montrealska Akropola [Tribute to Laibach]".
The band disbanded in July 2006 via an official announcement on their website. At the end of 2006, they started releasing all their albums as open source audio via archive.org.
Members
- Jacek (The DoomHammer) – lead vocalsSingingSinging is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
, drum machineDrum machineA drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums or other percussion instruments. They are used in a variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music...
, samplersSampler (musical instrument)A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...
, keyboardsKeyboard instrumentA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments... - Grzegorz Haus ov Doom – operatic vocals, samplers, keyboards
Discography
- Life is Death Postponed (Demo, 1995)
- Slavic Blasphemy (CD, 1997)
- No Paradise To LoseNo Paradise to LoseNo Paradise to Lose is Zaraza's second full-length album. It was previously recorded in 1999, but disappointed, the band scrapped and rerecorded it, to release it later in 2003. It comes packaged in a DVD case...
(CD, Total Zero Records, 2003) - Montrealska Akropola - A Tribute to Laibach (Single, Total Zero Records, 2003)
- Life is Death Postponed (2004, CD-RCD-RA CD-R is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once Read Many optical medium, though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session....
reissue with bonus tracks)
External links
- http://www.archive.org/details/Zaraza_Slavic_Blasphemy"Slavic Blasphemy" CD available for download in FLACFLACFLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
, Ogg Vorbis and MP3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
formats] - http://www.archive.org/details/ZarazanoParadiseToLose"No Paradise to Lose" CD available for download in FLACFLACFLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
, Ogg Vorbis and MP3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
formats] - Zaraza on FacebookFacebookFacebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
- Zaraza page on the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
- Zaraza interviews on the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
- Zaraza album artwork on the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
- Zaraza wallpapers on the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...