ZEBEDY – Exist (new album)

Fatboy Slim’s album title, ‘You’ve Come A Long Way Baby’ is quite fitting if you direct it at Zebedy. They certainly have come a long way. From the beginnings of Lantern in 2002, when Jonny Harding-Smith (known then, and probably now as Jonny Lantern) slid across the scene on his knees and somehow managed to wind up all and sundry simply by playing guitar better than the rest of them put together.
Lantern’s PR machine (whoever that was) flamed just about everybody on the early day forums, and there’d be spits and spats, songs written in the name of local rivalry – and it was all entertaining. Publicity whoring aside, one fact they couldn’t deny is that Jonny is one motherfucking excellent guitarist.

Lantern had their moments, I have a rack of copied CDr demos aswell as the two albums ‘Uniquely Uniform’ and ‘It’s Amazing What You’ll Agree To When You’re on Fire’ – the sparks of which seemed to dampen in 2009 when singer Taff quit the band.
Zebedy began as an offshoot to Lantern, as an instrumental, bluesy-rock extention for Jonny to show off his guitar skills without the hinderance of a singer taking the limelight. As they gigged more, words were added, and I wasn’t overly impressed, I thought sticking vocals in there spoiled it somewhat. This album however is a different band to that 3-piece of 3 years ago – this is serious progressive metal that thumps its way into your living room / car / headphones / toilet etc. And whereas Lantern would fill every space available on a CD with whatever songs they had lying round, Zebedy have quality running throughout this album, to the extent that the final track Pandemonium is too short at over 9 minutes long; I didn’t want it to end!
The lazy way is to compare them to other bands and reading the blurb Biffy Clyro get mentioned, which is a band I know nothing about. For me there’s sprinklings of Faith No More, Lantern and Muse in there as this riff-tastic and superbly recorded album batters at you from all angles – and NO wanky guitar solos! It’s so well produced, so well spaced out, and hey, if your bird has got a great voice, it’s best to get her to sing on a track or two as well to break it up a bit, and duet with to excellent effect on Changes II.
From the Faith No Moresq opening of Intro and They’ll Speak of Us For Years you know Zebedy mean business and they certainly don’t look at themselves through rose tinted glasses. Check it out today… here