Band : Mike Zero
Album title : Zeroism
Label : Wolverine
Distributor : Sonic Rendezvous
Release date : November 2008
Release : CD

The protagonist of this wonderful album, Mike Zero, made his first musical experiences through studio work and touring with dkay.com, the sideproject of Die Krupps frontman Jürgen Engler. During Summer 2007, Mike took out time to write the songs for this debut solo album, which was recorded earlier this year under productional supervision of one Siggi Bemm at Woodhouse Studios in Hagen (Germany, or hadn’t you understood that already?) with the aid of drummer Jens Küchenthal (in other words, all other instrumentaion on the album comes from Zero himself) and backing singers Dalia Teuber and Sarah Middeldorf.

The result is a highly infectiously catchy 11-track album. With cited influences ranging from early Pop Punk alà Iggy Pop, The Stooges, The Clash (without their Reggae stuff), Sex Pistols, The Damned, Buzzcocks, Dead Kennedys, and Ramones, additional influences from the likes of New York Dolls, Velvet Underground, “’80s Wave” bands like XTC, Wire, the wackieness of Devo (and not, like you might expect when someone refers to this band, the weird keyboard sound they used), some Rockabilly from the likes of Stray Cats and Eddie & The Hotrods, and even a couple of bands I’ve never heard of (The Members, The Depressions), you might get an idea of what this guy’s own music might sound like. If you’ve heard the man sing with dkay.com, you’ve also already got an idea of how the voice fits the music you might’ve imagined up, but really I think you would do the man injustice! Mike has a very specific vocal signature alright. On a couple of songs (album openers “Nervous Breakdown Guarantee” and “Teenage Idol”) the combination with the female backing singers brings along a certain remeniscence to Sisters Of Mercy (especially because on those songs Mike also uses a certain technique on the guitar), at other moments you can hear clearly that Zero took influence from Jello Biafra to include certain vocal inflections (not to emulate him, because the vocal signature is quite different, but simply to sing in a similar way).

Well, I could go on making comparisons, but really…again…nothing would do Mike Zero’s debut solo album enough justice, as in my personal humble opinion the man has brought a very unique and unified album (which still has the necessary variation – the occasional acoustic opening – to keep the listener enthralled during the complete 31 ½ minutes each listening session will take to get through). Infectiously catchy from the get-go to the finish, without any lesser song in the lot! Check out the couple of songs (yeah baby, those two album opening tracks are posted, as well as “Complete Controll”, another song with female backings, and a video – but I ain’t sure what’s on there, because I haven’t had time to check it out – the same excuse you’ve possible already read of me trying to get as much possible info for some 20 other bands in only two days prior to this short X-Mas holidays period, you know) at myspace.com/mikezeromusic. More may be available at mike-zero.com, but really what’s available on the MySpace page should be enough to convince you of the quality of the album overall! Personally, I was bought from the first song, and what followed didn’t let me down one bit…no wonder I’ve put Zeroism in my year-lists, eh!?

In order to promote the album, Zero got together a band featuring second guitarist E.W.U., bassist Christoph Herder, and drummer Olaf Bolte, and as Mike Zero & His Riot Ensemble (wot…no galls?), the guys played their album presentation gig at Dortmund’s Live Station (where the band also gave the video for single “Teenage Idol” its premiere showing – hey, possibly that’s what that video on the MySpace is, eh?). At the moment of extracting my info, there were no plans yet for a tour…but there will be a couple of gigs in January (Dortmund & Berlin – for further details check the websites cited above), and I have this good feeling about those events very possibly growing out to become part of the more fun and exciting memories for the people who will attend the shows!

98/100

Tony.