Switzerland 80s glam metal inspired purveyors are back. In black, but still flamboyant tho' ! With a new digital single out King Zebra is back in action.
From the first measures of the song the infectious groove and melody of the main riff find its way deep down to your skull, thanks to the tasty slide guitar licks !
More Hard rock n' roll than Glam metal, King Zebra brand new track is one of those songs naturally cut to get radio airplay and to easily convince a new audience to join the party.
In 3 minutes and a half you get anything a good classic rock track might need : simple yet catchy main guitar riff, Bonham-like drums and tight bass delivering a groovy rhythm section, a great voice and melody along with a lot of background vocals, a basic song structure and a slide guitar solo on top of it. Nothing new but damn effective !
The sound production is irreproachable and do exactly what its supposed to : make everything and everyone sound good and the song ready to be blasted on any device and location.
And while King Zebra style nowadays is less colorful and juvenile than before the message remains the same. Having a good time.
A short interview with the Ben (drums) below.
You've just released a brand new digital single : "Bad idea". It's been 2 years since your latest album and some changes occurred in the meantime. Can you sum it up for me ?
Shortly after we released the last album in 2015 we separated from our longtime frontman Tom Hoochy Coo. The reasons were differences in thoughts where we wanna go and what we wanna reach with the band. But we separated in peace and we are still very good friends. We haven't had any new lead vocalist by this time but still had confirmed Shows for 2016. So we engaged an interim singer who was a good friend of us and kept on searching for a permanent lead singer. At the same time we engaged our producer of the album "Wild! Wild! Wild!", Jerry, as a permanent rhythm guitarist in the band. In April 2017 we came across ex-China lead vocalist Eric St. Michaels and started writing new songs.
Based on this new track, the music of the band seems to have evolved to something more groovy and direct, less L.A.'s glam metal than you use to be. Same with your image which is less colorful. What lead you to that ?
I would say our music is more grown up now than it used to be. We started all this because we really dig this crazy 80s LA sunset strip world. We celebrated it on and besides the stage. But the reality in Switzerland isn't all about cocaine and hookers and if you pretend it was you lose credibility. It doesn't mean that we are boring fucks now...our band room is still filled with empty beer bottles and we love to party but in a contemporary way. Onstage we lost the animal print spandex and concentrated more on the music. Our live shows are still a highlight because we still follow Lemmy’s advice: “People don’t want to see the guy next door on stage; they want to see a being from another planet. You want to see somebody you’d never meet in ordinary life.”
"Bad Idea" is the first song available with your new singer, Eric St Michael who formerly was in China. How did you meet him ?
We met Eric in April 2017. There was the annual Lemmy Bash going on in a club nearby. This is a show where lots of Swiss rock musicians honor Motorhead with a big show. Our bass player Michael was invited to join. He let one of the other musicians, Pat Wydler who is also a music journalist, know that we were still looking for a lead vocalist. He connected us to Eric. By that time China played their last show. But Eric never thought of stop making Rock and playng live on stage. So one fit to another: Eric got a bunch of youngsters full of energy and King Zebra got the Bon Jovi from Switzerland.
What input each members have in the songwriting process and what Eric brings to the band new material ?
Jerry and Roman (the two guitarists) are the brain behind the songs of King Zebra. In Jerry’s home studio they work on the instrumental parts. All the vocals are Eric’s business. As he has a longtime career as vocal coach and decades of experience as lead singer his job is amazing. As we send him an instrumental demo it takes two hours and we receive jaw dropping vocal lines. Our workflow is mainly digital. Lots of sending stuff back and forth. I’d say dropbox is almost our rehearsal room as Eric is based in Lucerne and the rest of us in Zurich. The instrumental fraction still meets once a week for rehearsing though.
How is the audience and press response so far for the new song ?
The audience is excited about the news that Eric is the new singer and about how the new defined sound of King Zebra is. We’ve spread the word as far as we can and the press reacts with a high interest. We reached lots of blogs and radio stations who are featuring us on their platform. And of course everybody is curious to see what comes next which is good for us because there’s a lot to come.
Will you release a video for it ?
The video is ready to be released on February 11th!
What are your plan for the coming months ?
Our plans are: A recording session in February at V.O. Pulver’s Little Creek Studio. Three brand-new songs will find their way to the public in the near future, release dates aren’t defined yet. At least for one there will be another music video. In May we are starting to play Live shows, the first on May 26th at the Hall of Fame in Wetzikon, Switzerland. The audience can expect a killer show with all brand new songs.
Digital single
Digital album
Digital album
https://www.kingzebra.ch/
https://www.facebook.com/KINGZEBRA.band/
https://king-zebra.bandcamp.com/
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