Jazz Is Dead Live is an Avant Black metal jazz album by RuinZu who are a combination of the bands Ruins Alone and Zu that brings together two Ostia based Italians with one Japanese musician, The album was recorded live at the Jazz Is Dead Festival in Torino May 2024. Ruinzu are Tatsuya Yoshide, Massimo Pupilo and Luca T. Mai, during there careers they have collaborated with among others Ken Vandermark, Bill Laswell, Derek Bailey, Fred Frith and John Zorn.
The album opens with Gravestone we all stand looking at the stark black Gravestone, the dark rumbling sax and bass make us reflect on just what killed Jazz, was it Rock & Roll or just changing times, the wailing vocals like they have hired one of those professional mourners who wail at the gravestone, like they didn't quite make the grade as Tuvan throat singers. Luca T Mai has the dirtiest Parkeresque sax solo he can manage.
Speed Ball the most Jazz of drugs, this is at the crazed end of things, like the balance of the Speed Ball is 75% cocaine and 25% Heroin it flies and gets rather intense.
Asmodeo has a slowly evolving intro before it explodes in your face with a heavy sax riff, with episodic drum patterns, built around the steady bassline, and a section where the Tatuya Yoshide is playing the rims of his drums, like a pause before insanity ensues.
La Grande Madre Delle Bestie has a sax solo that weaves through this tune like George Best used to weave around defences, with some heavy hitting nearly proggy drumming building intensity.
Vexoprakta has deep wailed vocals battling with intense squalls of sound, the vocals are in the spirit of Damo Suzuki. Burning Stone is the sound of Hot yoga going wrong, the pain when that too hot stone is placed on your back.
Hyderomastgroningem is like the Guantanamo School Of Medicine style Jello Biafra but with even more out their musical fusillades.
Sanctuary sounds like all the trauma is very close on your heels and you need to disappear double quick, in order to find that Sanctuary that only dense Black metal jazz can provide.
Memories Of Zworrisdeh sound fraught with danger and impending doom, build around Massimo Pupillo's monumental bass riff and yelped vocals.
Muro Torto is a dark stop start torrent of the stodgiest cake imaginable; The bass will shake your very core if played loud enough.
Mar Glaciale Artico may have an ice-cold title, but is as hot as anything on this album, slow punctuating bass is joined by dark sax stabs and evolving mesmeric drumming, it makes it feel like you should be watching some puffins waddle across the horizon while listening to this, the synths add layers of intrigue and musical despair to what's going on.
The album closes with Solar Anus as the sun does indeed shine out of this lot's arses, in places this sounds like they have been constipated and are now letting rip with relief, the cymbals are pattering across the speakers while that bass just lets everything stream out in time for the gentlest sax playing on the album to see them home.
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