Posted in Whathaveyou on November 1st, 2023 by JJ Koczan
One imagines that, circa 30 years ago, there were older heads hanging around getting a big kick out of kids in Led Zeppelin shirts the way the youth now emblazon Nirvana logos as a sign of culture. Not arguing at all. It’s friggin’ awesome. Hailing from Ankara in Turkey, heavy rocking five-piece Strider — who released their debut album, Midnight Zen (review here), earlier this year have taken on the Seattle legends’ “All Apologies.” Originally from 1993’s In Utero, it was of course the band who broke grunge huge’s final LP before guitarist/vocalist Kurt Cobain committed suicide in 1994.
I can still hear the original version without hearing it, and Strider are both loyal to the blueprint laid out and bringing something of themselves to the track tonally and melodically while also tripping out the end in a way that feels organic and creative. I wouldn’t ask anything else of such a cover. Strider‘s version appears on Rather Be Dead Than Cool, a tribute LP from Turkish imprint Mevzu Records.
The song is streaming below, and under that, you’ll find the album player too, just in case you’re up for a revisit. If you didn’t catch it the first time around, I doubt you’ll regret doing so now.
Text mostly from Bandcamp:
In January of 2023, Mevzu Records (a renown Underground Turkish Record Label) invited Strider to cover a Nirvana Song for a Tribute Album.
We immediately resonated with the In Utero song All Apologies, thinking that it might be a good fit for the band.
We decided to get in the studio, record it live and get out. The outcome was this waveform, somber yet familiar, a ‘’corny Nirvana cover song’’ which speaks to us, tells our story.
This track is part of a tribute album ” Rather Be Dead Than Cool ” by Mevzu Records.
Posted in Reviews on January 31st, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Ankara, Turkey’s Strider make their full-length debut with the self-released Midnight Zen, and quite a debut it is. With the Kyuss-but-not-only-Kyuss-inspired “Hive” at the outset, the live-recording five-piece put themselves in the sphere of contemporary European-style heavy, perhaps taking influence from some of the many acts in neighboring Greece in addition to the classics of the form. One way or the other, they swing in “Hive” and shove in such a way as to put them in league with the likes of Valley of the Sun, an expansive production aiding them from the start in creating a sense of atmosphere to go along with the inherent range of their material, which starts raucous but isn’t necessarily limited to throwing elbows.
Fronted by Atılım Karaca, whose from-the-gut voice-push on the opener will be a familiar enough method to genre heads but who, like the band generally, isn’t limited to one approach, with Selçuk Çelebi and Yiğit Çiçek on guitar, Sertuğ Kostik on bass and Mertcan Kabaş on drums, the album — cover by Yağız Eyiişleyen — was tracked with Bora Özkum (who also mixed) at Mirage Studios in Ankara, co-produced by the band, and mastered by Memet İncili for a sound that is sharp but full and able to pull the listener into the momentum that “Hive” creates even as the subsequent “Bystander Apathy” immediately expands outward from the foundation the lead cut sets.
It does so by slowing the tempo a bit, pulling back on the vocal oomph and riding a twisting groove in the chorus on its way with deceptive patience for all the surrounding crash to a fuzzy bridge and a later airy solo section that more than hints at the crux of Midnight Zen itself, which lies in the band’s ability to pull together melodic songcraft, jammy breadth, and hard-hitting distorted rhythm. In its momentary break before it enters its seventh minute, “Bystander Apathy” is suitably melancholic, but it soon surges forward to end in its final minute on a chugging largesse worthy of its movement to that point.
On its face, Midnight Zen moves back and forth between shorter and longer cuts, and the tracklist pattern reads as follows:
1. Hive (3:51)
2. Bystander Apathy (8:16)
3. Dream With the Dreamer (5:26)
4. Midnight Zen (10:26)
5. Molly the Holy (6:07)
This obviously puts the 10-minute song that shares the album’s name as a focal point — they named the record Midnight Zen, so fair enough — but each piece of the whole serves a function to add something and deepen the listening experience, as with the semi-psychedelic noodling early in “Dream With the Dreamer,” which seems conscious of where it’s heading even as it holds back the weighted surge until it’s almost halfway through, patiently building in the drums and bass while the guitars set themselves on a more willfully meandering path before the fuzz pedals are stomped and the track coalesces around festival-worthy soloing and a memorable nod of a hook before they crash to a feedback finish.
As the centerpiece, “Dream With the Dreamer” moves the journey of the album deeper along its course, the band’s fluidity coming to the forefront whether it’s in the quieter or the louder half of the song, with Karaca‘s voice malleable to what’s called for in the moment. “Bystander Apathy” certainly has its heavier stretches and subtly angular procession, and “Dream With the Dreamer” affirms that the plotted feel there is no fluke.
In the second half payoff, the guitars resolve in a kind of jet-engine-takeoff repetitive buzz, but the full wash of distortion and cymbal crash makes for an even richer affect as they move toward that extended ringout finish, fading to the silence that serves as a direct-feeling — though on vinyl that’s invariably where the sides would split — transition into “Midnight Zen” itself, which maybe dips into Mediterranean folk in its early guitar leads as the song fades in like sunrise before picking up where that jet engine in “Dream With the Dreamer” left off, a largesse of riff very much bolstered by the bass as the initial verse unfolds smoothly.
Either one or both guitars gets a solo in the midsection, and the title-track shifts toward the instrumental to begin its back half, breaking from the triumphant shred to a stretch of pastoral noodling that calls back to the song while working in quiet and echoing vocals before locking into the denser nod of the payoff, having already hit its last crash before residual feedback carries it across the 10-minute mark and toward the finale “Molly the Holy,” which is executed as something of a summary of what Strider have done thus far, pulling together the atmospheric sections and the hints of Elder-style prog-heavy with a more straight-ahead heavy desert fuzz tonality, harnessing a three-dimensional mix to create and then fill a space with its own volume.
“Molly the Holy” does this by following the pattern of starting mellow and then kicking in heavy (at 1:40, if you’re looking for it), but the purposefully nodding tempo gives a grandeur to the procession, and the cavernous floating melody of the vocals matches well. They transition somewhat suddenly into a quieter verse, bass holding steady while even the drums settle down momentarily to punctuate the notes of guitar, and by the time they come back around to what will be Midnight Zen‘s capper heavy section, they’re in a full-on lumber.
Though as it moves past its fifth minute there’s tremolo guitar and a sense of end-of-set big finish in progress, the band remain admirably unhurried in their delivery, refusing to give into the temptation to blast out their ending and undercut the work they’ve done establishing an ambience across the record as an entirety. This is part of the accomplishment of Midnight Zen, but only part. The fullness of the production and the clear intent on the part of Strider to enter into the conversation of modern European heavy is writ throughout that last roll and the album more generally, and their potential to do just that is palpable in these songs.
It’s not that they don’t have growing to do, but that they’ve clearly already put time into developing their sound since their 2018 debut EP, Ironiea, was released, and they come across like they’ll continue to move forward in progressive fashion. Thinking about that hopeful future makes Midnight Zen an even more exciting listen, but whatever they may build on top of the accomplishments here going forward, those same accomplishments are worth appreciating right now.
