Zeal & Ardor’s “Stranger Fruit”

8 June sees the eagerly awaited release of Zeal & Ardor’s new album. Entitled “Stranger Fruit”, it’s their second and marks a considerable step forward for the Basel-based multi-instrumentalist Manuel Gagneux. If the much-praised debut “Devil is Fine” showed an artist in the process of discovering a new voice, on “Stranger Fruit” Gagneux is now truly inhabiting it. After many months of incessant touring, Zeal & Ardor have become a proper band, a powerful unit truly capable of doing justice to their vision of a new, metal-tinged blend of gospel, blues and soul.

Already, the album has received a lot of media attention. Whilst Metal Assault gave it a 10/10 review, Gagneux features on the cover of the latest subscribers issue of German Visions magazine. He was also featured in Revolver (UK) and, with a substantial interview, in Billboard (USA) where he has this to say about his approach: “One of the things was that we’ve come full circle from with this classically black music that was reimagined by people of European descent [in the form of rock] and this very exclusive Scandinavian group [that created black metal]. And now, as a semi-black person, I’m reappropriating [Laughs] the perversion — or evolution — of the very idea and mixing it with its own inception.”

“Stranger Fruit” is released by Radicalis and MVKA. To support the release, Zeal & Ardor have embarked on an extended tour in April that will take them through to mid-December, taking in most of Europe as well as twenty dates in North America.

Zeal & Ardor
Metal Assault – Review
Visions – Review
Revolver – Interview
Billboard – Interview
Radicalis
MVKA