REVIEW ON 'RIDE WITH THE DEVIL' (USA)

ZIPPO - Maktub

I love a good 'guest appearance' on an album. Beastie Boys and Kerry King, The Prodigy and Tom Morello, hell even Ray Davis with Metallica. When it works its great, when it doesn't... Well then you just have a kinda of Soulfly and Fred Durst scenario on your hands and no one wants that. Again.

Fortunately for Italian 5 piece stoner doom outfit Zippo, they landed quite a power house of a name, within the stoner rock community at least - one Mr Ben Ward. Maybe not a house hold name but for all of you who are currently squinting at this with a quizzical look on your face he's the hairy tattooed chap who fronts the might Orange Goblin.

So they must have a fair bit of talent, or at least some good contacts to land a guest like that you'd think right? Well, yeah you'd be pretty accurate to be fair. Like bit of a mix of A Perfect Circle meets Machine Head, they admittedly wouldn't really be to my taste usually, but Zippo have kind of put a bit of a different spin on things. Like a reinvented industrial kind of sound with more melancholia and a distinct classic desert rock sort of mysticism intertwined within the riffs. Really sort of strange and eerie at times it doesn't quite slip into the label of 'prog' but it is none the less entirely unique. Or at least unique to me, being as I've on the whole never really ventured too deeply into the realms of the industrial scene. There are elements there that do ring clear of a touch of Maynard James Keenan, which does pain me to say as I personally can't stand the man, but alas I can somewhat recognise his talent within the aforementioned genre. Extremely well produced and polished the album is a blindingly good effort regardless of what style you want to label it. Definitely worth checking out even if on the face of things it may not sound like your cup of tea. But for anyone who even in the slightest bit a Tool or A Perfect Circle fan... Well I'd put money on it being a sure fire hit.

~Jay

http://ridewiththedevil.blogspot.com/

REVIEW ON 'DOOMMANTIA' (USA)

ZIPPO - Maktub

It's with a mixture of joy and sadness that I have to type the following phrase: the new album by Zippo is incredibly good, so good and strong that it will hardly have the success it deserves in our own country. That's the harsh truth. Guys like Zippo, which are able to create an album like “Maktub”, that not only sounds great but also says something new and shows that there are bands in the scene that could become giants, are ignored or scoffed at in Italy.That sad, wow.The guys wanted to make something big. Actually, bigger. Huge. One can already see it by the Cd's magnificent artwork by Bass player Stonino. It's a package that makes you want to collect the album and makes you excited for what you're about to hear. And since as you press play, you get hit and rewarded with, possibly, one of the most intense and intelligent pieces of Heavy Rock of the year. The sound, perfected by the capable hands of Victor Love and James Plotkin (Khanate, SunnO))), Baroness), is like a machine of unpredictable intelligent heaviness. The riffs are huge, full of sudden turns towards groove, melody or mysteriously hypnotic spiraling. The whole band sounds perfectly oiled, delivering songs that are increasingly complex, crushing, and mesmerizing as the album progresses.While at first, thanks also to Davide's impressive vocal performance, you will bang your head and be drawn in by their Stoner-ish grooves with touches of intelligent Post-Metal, the record will unfold and you'll just get joyfully trapped into an architecture of complex structures, moments of jamming, tension and release, explosions of heaviness, sudden phases of eerie quiet.With the added guest appearances of Orange Goblin's Ben Ward or Zu's saxophonist Luca T Mai, the album just defies any categorization, like the great albums by late Mastodon, Kylesa or Baroness did. What you have here is a bold, intelligent, heavy, powerful explosion of sound that will get your heart on a first listen and grow more and more on you as you replay it. Possibly one of my favourite records this year and a must have.

Andrea Costanzo

www.doommantia.com

REVIEW ON 'SLUDGESWAMP' (USA)

ZIPPO - The Road To Knowledge

Inspired by Mexican chemical mind trips...

The Road to Knowledge, the last release by the Italian band Zippo.

The five guys in the band Zippo come from the coastal town of Pescara in Central Italy. Zippo is another outstanding band from my country’s rock panorama.

This 2009 release is a beautiful album in which stoner, psychedelic rock and heavy/doom atmospheres are blended together with prog touches to build up a peculiar style. Zippo guys are able to transfer this sound perfectly in live sessions as well, as I happened to experience about two months ago.

The album title derives from the name of a famous book by Mexican writer, Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan, which tells us about the author’s meeting and experience with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer. Accounts of mind altering herbal concoctions, spirits, invocations of gods and encounter with death became inspirations for Zippo’s music.

On the Zippo’s official blog page you may find reviews from magazines all over Europe, as Zippo toured extensively outside Italy (and they were actually on tour in Denmark when their native area was struck by a terrible earthquake last March, when hundreds of people died).

Mari

http://sludgeswamp.blogspot.com

REVIEW ON 'METALUNDERGROUND.COM' (USA)

ZIPPO - The Road To Knowledge

4,5/5

There are times, in music, for smoke and psychedelic sunsets. There are also times for the crushing bliss of total immersion in distorted guitars and drums. With a sound consisting of an informed blend of both these styles, Zippo have created an undeniably triumphant record, both paying homage to the lords of progressive stoner metal and making a bid for lordship themselves.

Hailing from Pescara, Italy, this five-piece band channels a rapturous dark progressive trance on “The Road to Knowledge.” The musical stylings have much to do with the inspiration behind the album – Carlos Castaneda’s highly-discussed book “The Teachings of Don Juan,” about his experiences with a Yaqui Indian shaman. To get a good picture of this, imagine Mastodon jamming with Porcupine Tree main man Steven Wilson on an album in a smoke-filled warehouse in Mexico while several natives perform various sorcery rites in the center of the room. Indeed, the dark and low sides of the album are bold and focused, while the highs are bright, boomy, psychedelic, and bludgeoning.

The guitar and bass work is especially technical for stoner metal, although there aren’t any overtly technical passages. Their groove contributes much to the southern sludgy sound, recalling Down, Black Sabbath, and some Mastodon at times. This is especially noticeable on tracks like “Three Silver Crows” and “The Smoke of Diviners,” while a distinct In Flames/Opeth influence can be heard on the acoustic passages of “Reality is What I Feel” and “He is Outside Us.” The really heavy parts of the album, which are also where the progressive elements show themselves most, are on songs like “Chihuahua Valley”, “El Enyerbado”, and “Mitote.” On these, the band creates an effortlessly ebbing and flowing stream of different time signatures, passages with percussive elements, and rising musical movements. The vocal stylings range from pachydermic distorted vocal screams to harmonized clean singing and onward to eerie whispered spoken word, giving a lot of color to the sound.

Rising stars in the progressive stoner rock category, Zippo are well on their way to success with this incredible sophomore release, which was expertly recorded and mixed in Italy at Twelve Studio by Andrea Di Giambattista and Francesco Di Florio. There’s a real sense of the utilization of sonic space to this album that sets it apart from most other releases in the genre. “The Road to Knowledge” was also mastered in California at Golden Studio by John Golden (Neurosis, The Melvins, Primus). This album is a must have for fans of Mastodon, Porcupine Tree, Isis, Down, and Pelican.

Highs: Bludgeoning stoner groove, fat and clear production, sustained intensity, sense of space in the music, and powerful low points.

Lows: The vocals could be a bit louder in the mix.

Bottom line: This a shining chunk of great progressive stoner metal/rock for fans of Mastodon, Porcupine Tree, Isis, and Pelican.

Progressivity_In_All

www.metalundergound.com