PLAYS STANDARDS

This is more of a jazz album rather than progressive rock. Even the name suggests it. "Playing standards" appears to be a typical jazz album making strategy. But this is a far cry from a typical jazz album. The sound is on the verge of heavy. Many parts sound like a collage of samples, although it's a carefully constructed illusion. Vocals are those crazy Japanese kind that you can hear on some of the Naked City's songs. Ground Zero take the melodies of some more or less popular songs that originally sounded pretty mellow, and make them extremely intense by using harsh sax variations, street noises, and other avant-garde techniques. Overall tone of the album is somewhat menacing. The original emotional charge of the "standard" melodies is intensified to the degree of paranoid frenzy. Definitely a masterpiece, a rare pearl, albeit somehow pretty obscure.