ZOCO
LUMANISTA I
Z3 Records
3/10
Does Eurovision have B-sides of all their uninspired rock? No, thank you, ZOCO, I’m good.
From the start, I have a bone to pick with ZOCO. The EP opens with Overstimulated, a song lamenting the digital-forward, always-on, social media-addiction stereotypes of “his generation,” calling out, “won’t someone save my generation?!” Like, dude, just put your phone down. Delete your apps. It’s not that hard. Sure, you can use it to text or call your friends, but like, save yourself.
Especially when you have a million pics of you wearing a faux-battle jacket with multiple Hot-Topic-coded patches. Misfits, Megadeth, Motorhead, Black Sabbath, and Pantera patches alongside more from Green Day, a “one love” reggae patch, Metallica, Nirvana, and Gojira (OK, that’s pretty tight), I expect you to be the one leading the charge. These are bands that ain’t calling for others to save them. Get your shit together.
The music borders on catchy, but gives in to clichés far too often. Weedle-weedle-wee guitar solos that are just chord-progession arepeggios could be badass, but are instead filler riffs. The second half of Restless sounds like they couldn’t remember how Green Day’s Holiday actually went and just kind of went for it.
This is “rock” like Winger and Warrant were “metal.” Vocals that share more with hair metal and early aughts radio rock than anything with real passion. The lyrics don’t shoot for subtlety nor depth and feel like no one told them to dig deeper. I could see Stuart from Beavis and Butthead rocking a ZOCO shirt.