Zaiph is a musical project created by Keyboardist/Vocalist Nicolas Moroni; Nicolas started composing in 2009 his first album Echlectic, released in 2011, which contained 9 songs and a video clip for their first single, ‘Cosmic Gerlsnaigs’. The band also went live a couple of times and in places such as Argentine.
Their first Album, Echlectic doesn’t have a single genre, it’s rather a fusion that ranges from Gothic / Doom all the way to Tango. They also discuss new and powerful topics on their albums, such as many social and religious and everyday common events.
On the 8th of 2014, Zaiph released their second album named -guess what- Zaiph and it has eight tracks; the album, much like the first one, doesn’t fit into quite one genre. It ranges, again, from loads of gothic, heavy, doom and psychedelic kind of music, but it mainly has the thrash theme all over.
The album begins with the first song -why am I surprised?- every album begins with the first song, this one however sounds rich with a nice guitar riff, Synth/keyboards in the background; But then suddenly the synth is gone, the song all of a sudden turns thrash, and vocals come in, which is not bad, but not good. The idea of having synth or keyboards in general is really good, gives a very nice rich sound, but once you add that, taking it away leaves the song and the listener with a feeling of emptiness, it’s like taking away a bass line. I really like how the song shifts from the thrashy noisy feel, to a mellow part and then back to the thrashy part it was really well done.
‘El Antidoto’ is the second song, it has really nice guitar riffs, as well as drums, and they fit perfectly. The song sounds like an absolute beast. One thing however was really off, rather annoying, and it’s back vocals. It’s really poor and just one line of screaming no harmony, melody, nothing; it’s as simple as someone getting tortured in the background resulting in our torture as well. Yet again, Brilliant shifts in riffs and continuity of how they sound.
The third song; ‘Corrosivo’, and I really really liked it. Again I must say, they know how to write and add riffs and make them sound related and continuous. Another thing is vocals, they were brilliantly done in this song, the back vocals lad is still getting tortured, I don’t know Spanish, but I think he’s asking for help.
Then comes ‘Dance Elf, Dance’ and ‘Psylocibina’, 4th and 5th tracks of this album. These 2 songs sound very much alike; nice classic chill beats and riffs, it’s like you’re taking a break of the album to just go on after these, I really loved the placement of these songs, how they’re placed right in the middle. ALSO HEY! Whoever was torturing the backing vocal actually stopped, and the vocal started to do some harmony lines.
The album then keeps on slowly and nicely going back to it’s thrashy feel and groove until it reaches it’s last song, ‘Solitaria Pieza’, but before that, ‘Flashback’ actually has a nice solo halfway through it that keeps on extending until the last song. ‘Solitaria Pieza’ , comes in with a mixture of both easy mid tempo beats and hard riffs. On the the ending, the song actually has Synth again and a really nice female backing vocal, having that happen, I think the back vocal actually couldn’t take the torture anymore and died, and they had to get another backing vocal. Sadly she only did, roughly, 30 seconds of the song.
Overall the album is worth listening to, really good work done on it and I really enjoyed listening/reviewing it. The album is an 8/10.
Written by: Abdoul Ibrahim.
Edited by: Duha Mousa
