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The cover of Zombi’s “Spirit Animal” is really lame, like, “hey, check out my ‘Masters of the Universe’ tattoo” lame or “Yeah, I think it’s a good idea to make ‘Naruto’ anime music videos with Linkin’ Park songs” lame. The image in question, a heavily airbrushed photo of a charging elephant with lightning striking in the background, looks like the box art of a video game an out of touch middle-aged mother would buy for her rebellious 11-year-old – or a rejected Zoobooks cover. All of which gave me a bad first impression of what turned out to be a fairly solid progressive rock album.
Zombi are a two-man band who specialize in a style of synth-rock largely inspired by the soundtracks of late 1970s’ horror films. The films of George A. Romero and Dario Argento in particular seem to have a lasting effect on the group; Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” was made in their hometown of Pittsburg, and its Italian title became the band’s moniker.
While Zombi’s sound has a direct lineage to horror scores, especially Argento’s in-house band Goblin, the duo has carved out a niche for itself by reducing their instrumentation to bass, live drums and synthesizer, taking peripheral influences from post-rock and metal.
So, bad cover art aside, how is the album? Apart from the addition of guitar to certain tracks, “Spirit Animal,” is not much different from its predecessor, “Surface to Air.” The title track album-opener is a bit corny but in a tolerable way. Its counterpart, “Spirit Warrior,” is reminiscent of an energetic mid ’90s role-playing game soundtrack but with a more natural timbre.
“Earthly Powers” and “Cosmic Powers” both continue in this vein, with the former leaning more toward the aforementioned Italian horror soundtrack while the latter drifts even further into video game territory. The album closes with “Through Time,” a spacey song with distorted bass and phased synthesizer effects, which could easily serve as the ambience to one of H.P. Lovecraft’s more hallucinatory novellas.
“Spirit Animal” will most likely be too nostalgic for many people, but for those whose idea of a good time is spending an hour and half with “Profondo Rosso” or “Dawn of the Dead,” it is certainly worth a look past the cover.
Grade: B
Bangor Daily News