UFO Zetra suddenly appeared on our radars in 2021 and, after a few self-produced tracks and EPs released on cassette, were spotted by Nuclear Blast for a self-titled debut album. The British duo cultivate mystery right down to an official biography that emphatically states ‘they're called the Wanderers, the Dagger and the Staff, Vocals and Synthesiser, Beauty and The Beast’ before adding ‘bad things happen but they happen for a reason’. Our interest is piqued.
Zetra is a leap into the unknown, a plunge into mysterious darkness and an initial surprise to discover this unclassifiable sound. High-pitched, melancholic, contemplative vocals, pop flashes, heavier, menacing guitars that occasionally darken the picture, weightless synth strings: Zetra blend shoegaze, gothic metal and dark pop. Imagine a meeting between Pet Shop Boys, Alcest and HEALTH.
The darkness of this eponymous debut album is shimmering. It's all about illusions, pretence and deception. You only have to compare the apparent softness of the first track with its title, Suffer Eternally, to get an idea. With its ultra-dark, mystical, overplayed postures and its sense of counterpoint, Zetra exude the second degree so typical of the gothic movement, at once extremely serious but not without a certain irony and self-mockery. We're also surprised by the breadth of the sound, despite the minimalist set-up (guitar / synth / drum machine): Zetra knows how to give their music emphasis.
From a wandering full of a rather uniform spleen emerge regular jolts that energise the whole: the biting riffs of Sacrifice, the thickness of Serena Cherry's (Svalbard) cries on Starfall, the voice of Sólveig Matthildur (Kælan Mikla) on Shatter the Mountain, the sepulchral melody of the piano on Inseparable whose funereal heaviness is so delectable... Zetra plunge us into a constant hallucinatory fog, making it all the more enjoyable to savour the variations on offer, the more telluric passages, the more aggressive outbursts that shatter a serene surface that merely conceals the torments raging beneath it.
With a first album full of nuances and trompe-l'œil, Zetra have fun disorientating its listeners to better torture them. There may be a lack of different ideas here and there to liven up the bitter-sweet contemplation and prevent it from turning to grey monotony, but the proposition is as atypical as it is solid. The duo are clever at making their misdeeds accessible, the better to poison us with their venom. We can see a few spikes rising as they approach, only to lower themselves later, just long enough for them to lighten up and drop their prehistoric postures. There's enough potential here to force pouting faces into every scene!
