Seattle’s Zeke have long operated on what you could call the Motörhead Principle: They only play raw, fast, and loud. Subtlety is something they steamrolled over a long time ago, and far from limiting them, it’s made them one of America’s great underappreciated rock acts. While they tore through the ’90s in a way that paralleled brash punk’n’rollers like the Dwarves and Turbonegro, Zeke have always relied less than those acts on lyrical shock value, putting all their energy instead into sounding as nasty and speedy as possible. Hellbender is their first album in 14 years, and it fits right into their unabashedly rude catalog alongside 1994’s Super Sound Racing and 1998’s Kicked in the Teeth.
Most of Zeke’s songs follow a simple formula: Blind Marky Felchtone, the group’s sole consistent member, scrapes throat and strings as he’s been doing for over two decades, making rock swing into a glass-spiked blur. It’s usually all over in about a minute or so. Sometimes, there will be a Kiss-via-Skynyrd lick thrown in, squealing in fast and exiting even sooner. Taken as a single 20-minute chunk, Hellbender feels like mainlining adrenaline. It doesn’t have a proper introduction or conclusion; songs barrel in and out, and you’re left to process what happened afterwards. Were 20-minute sets to become mandatory, Zeke wouldn’t just be compliant, they would thrive.
Their last full-length album, Til The Living End, was brusque compared to a lot of punk and metal that came out in 2004, yet it featured a couple songs that were slightly more laid-back, like the single “Dolphenwulf.” Hellbender does not have any such detours. With original bassist Kurt Colfelt back in the fold for his first appearance since 1996’s Flat Tracker, it’s a full commitment to their slash-and-burn ’90s tactics, all lightning-fast, bare-bones riffs and sour defiance.
The elemental rock fury of Hellbender often feels like it comes from a time before punk. Motörhead, after all, started off many shows saying “We’re Motörhead, and we play rock’n’roll,” resisting the urge to put themselves squarely in either the punk or metal camps. Zeke play with a similar philosophy, and as far as philosophies go, bashing and bashing again and again works a lot better than misguided ambition. In the same sense, Hellbender recalls the Stooges in their prime, stoking and embracing chaos on the rawest level. This is a joyous album that needs no affirmation other than its own speed.
The cynical way to look at Hellbender is that Zeke are stuck doing the same style after a 14-year break, that they’re not tapped into what’s going on right now. But the truth is, there’s always room to rub the basics down to their most exposed. Zeke are the dive bar that’s survived onslaughts of gentrification, knowing that the charm of lawless riffing and broken bottles never fades.
