Zombie Apocalypse NOW!
Rising from the dead, Zombie Apocalypse NOW! (ZAN!) is back!
Officially ending its nearly two-year hiatus with the release of the band’s new EP, Bandora’s Box, Jan. 14 at Louie’s Trophy House and Grill, the Kalamazoo “anti-zombie rock” trio has survived a lot.
“I suppose sometimes it seems like a lot of people are trying to eat you alive,” bassist/vocalist Jay Stuart told Recoil when asked how being in a band is like surviving a zombie apocalypse. “Actually, that doesn’t sound right.”
The band holed up for the last 23 months, stepping away from the Kalamazoo music scene in Feb. 2010, shortly after the release of their first EP, Forbidden Tales of SCIENCE, when guitarist/vocalist Dave Andrews and drummer Darin Bluhm left the band.
“With Dave’s departure [in December of 2009] we lost a songwriter, a singer and a distinct guitar style, which meant that the sound we built up to that point was flat-out gone,” Stuart explained. “And with Darin out [in February of 2010] we lost a drummer, meaning we just couldn’t play period. We moved on because ultimately we love playing music and you can’t do that by crying over abandonment issues, but it took time for us to pull it together.”
ZAN! got its second life when current drummer Doug Porter joined its ranks. Already a fan of the band from ZAN!’s first four-year run, from 2006 to 2010, Porter e-mailed them a few months after Bluhm left to ask about auditioning.
“To be perfectly frank, it was the youthful enthusiasm he brought with him that motivated us to get going again,” Stuart said about Porter. “If it wasn’t for that I would have ended the band a year ago.”
Porter then joined Stuart and co-founding guitarist/vocalist Travis Stickel – who he’d had first met and became friends over a conversation about zombies and the need to fight them with rock, way back in 2003 – to make ZAN! a trio again, something; they had tried before in 2007 and 2008.
“The sound as a trio is fine but we do prefer a thicker sound that you really need a second guitar player for,” Stuart said. “So we really would like to add another one sooner than later.”
Overall, ZAN!’s sound brings back the old days, with some fans saying the new lineup sounds better than ever, and others missing Andrews’ contributions to the band.
“I’m a little more bitter now – but aside from that it’s pretty similar,” Stuart added.
ZAN! started working on their new, four-song EP, Bandora’s Box, in the summer of 2011 and finished the final mixes in early November. They recorded with their good friend Miles Hardcastle of Kalamazoo band Star Destroyer (STRDSTR) in his band’s practice space.
The process took the trio a while since some of them live in Kalamazoo, and others live in Chicago, so getting together in one location took some time. They also intentionally avoided a professional studio this time, so it’s hard to compare to their previous disc.
“The main difference between FToS and Bandora’s Box is that this new EP is less like an EP and more like a really awesome demo,” Stuart said. “I personally think of our first EP as its own work to be judged accordingly and this new album as more of a preview of what the band is capable of with our new lineup.”
Two of the songs are brand new, while one was originally intended for FToS but scrapped, and the other is a really old song thrown on at the last minute.
“These songs were picked solely because we’re saving a lot of songs for a future – hopefully near-future – full-length album,” Stuart said. He added that the band’s main focus after the EP’s release will be on playing as much as they can, so they can make enough money and gain a large enough fan base to finally justify starting to work on the long-overdue album.
Assuming 2012 isn’t the end of the world, ZAN! has also talked about following this month’s release of Bandora’s Box with a tour in the spring.
Since first forming in 2006, ZAN! has seen the rise and fall of a lot of bands and venues around Kalamazoo, and they’ve noticed that fewer and fewer people swarm to shows every year.
“There are bands that have fans and draw crowds, but the scene feels seriously less populated than it once did,” Stuart said. “And that’s a shame.”