Album review: Zetra – Zetra

A couple of weeks ago, we caught up with the two figures behind Zetra to discuss their full-length debut album. Even without their corpsepaint, even without a bank of screens behind them showing retro-futuristic imagery, even knowing their names and seeing their real faces and hearing their real voices, we came away feeling we’d been caught even further in the Zetra riddle than when we started. Such is their magic.

Similarly, despite being bigger in scope and clearer in sound than the clutch of EPs to which they’ve put their name since emerging in 2020, this album only adds to the enigmatic aura, while also pulling you closer. If you know them from their previous works, or seemingly endless touring with Ville Valo, Creeper, A.A. Williams, Unto Others and more, you’ll already know their cosmic brew: a gothy liaison between Type O Negative-ish guitars and Pet Shop Boys synth-pop, powered by sequenced drums and possessed of a cosmic randyness somewhere between Deftones and Depeche Mode. Here, their universe is expanded beyond the intentionally lo-fi atmosphere of their early works to something far more lush. It’s like going from watching a Tron VHS on a CRT TV to seeing it in IMAX 3D.

Opener Suffer Eternally is like mainlining goth-pop, sounding like both a nod to the gutter-glitter of the ’80s and music beamed from space. Starfall brings something heavier to the mix, with backing screams from Svalbard’s Serena Cherry adding a shade of darkness to the mix, while Mirror begins with a riff and vocal line not unlike Deftones in The Upside Down, and Shatter The Mountain and Holy Malice have moments where they become enveloping blankets of thick, foggy heaviness.

It’s the constant push between these twin energies of Heaven and Hell that this album takes on its personality, though. The gentle Inseparable, Gaia and gigantic closer Miracle all float in celestial aether, often more keys than riff, the light to the earlier dark.

Already, Zetra were a superb entity. Here, they’re heading firmly for the stars. For what or why, they won’t say. But this is enough to make you want to blindly follow them wherever.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Type O Negative, Depeche Mode, HIM

Zetra is released on September 13 via Nuclear Blast. Get your exclusive Kerrang! X Zetra zine here