Last year French stoner/hard rock band ZOË returned after a seven-year absence with Back Into the Light, which came across my desk a few months back. Despite the fairly lengthy gap between this album and its predecessor, the group has continued where they left off with high energy material that blurs the lines between modern and classic variants of rock. ZOË may not be radically deviating from what you’d expect from this genre, offering up plenty of crunchy guitar tone and grooves, but they do it well and remain consistent from beginning to end.
I’ve said this quite a bit over the years, but there are quite a few French bands out there who are really good at channeling very American sounding rock styles. This has been the case within both the noise rock and stoner rock variants, and that continues to be true throughout Back Into the Light. While a lot of ZOË’s approach is undoubtedly a familiar one, what immediately stands out about their latest effort is how they’re still able to incorporate a lot of variety in their songwriting. You’re greeted with that grittier, crunchy guitar tone and a powerful, booming sound on the title track, falling somewhere between the likes of Kyuss, Monster Magnet, and Fu Manchu. But rather than simply sticking with this approach the entire time, the band opts to look even further back in rock history on some of their other songs. Sometimes they transition into pure bluesy rock a la Led Zeppelin, while songs like “Band of Brothers” have a bit of punk rock running through their veins. This ability to capture different sides of stoner and hard rock helps to give ZOË a bit more of an identity when compared to a lot of other bands that come across sounding like a clone of one of these sounds. Admittedly even with the variety, there are still a few tracks that blur together for me and don’t quite stand on their own, but Back Into the Light still remains enjoyable all the way through.
The vocals maintain this same balance of rock styles, as they move between lighter singing that soars over the instrumentation and much gruffer ones that add the type of grit most associate with stoner rock. This consistent back and forth between softer and aggressive pitches works well, and at times gives ZOË a sound that feels just as much 90s alternative rock as it does hard rock. Add in some backing chants from other members of the band, and you have a sound that’s absolutely huge and has the type of swagger that I like from my rock.
A few of the songs tended to run together over repeat listens, which is what keeps this album from being at the same level as some of those stoner rock classics for me. But when ZOË does hit that peak level of vocal and guitar hooks, they stand out and the way they’re able to hop between classic hard rock and more recent stoner rock works to their benefit. This is an album that passed me by when it released last year, but I’m glad to have found it as French bands continue to have a knack for this type of rock. Back Into the Light is available from LX/Brennus Music.
-Review by Chris Dahlberg
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