Zeal & Ardor

Zeal & Ardor started the way not many bands did a decade ago – on the Internet and, moreover, accidentally. The forefather of this venture, Manuel Gagneux, was a member of the forum 4chan, where he was enthusiastically sharing his pop project, Birdmask. Once, as an experiment, he asked what two musical genres he could mix and create a song out of. The answer was black metal and spirituals.

In 2014 a demo that nobody really heard about saw the light of day, but the fully fledged debut of the band, “Devil Is Fine”, shook the metal scene and raised a number of controversies. Recorded and played by Gagneux himself, the material was met with a variety of opinions and was featured in a multitude of media – from Bandcamp all the way to Rolling Stone.

The next release was the 2018 “Stranger Fruit” and it perfected the themes from the previous album. The well-received recording granted Manuel the status of one of the most important songwriters of contemporary avant-garde metal, further solidified by the EP “Wake of a Nation” and the self-titled album released in 2022.