Man, Italy seems like a really cool place to live. All the great food, Roman history, what is currently the world’s best soccer team, the Corleone family and then bands like Ground Zero. They certainly aren’t doing anything new with their self described “spaghetti metal” sound, but they have followed in the footsteps of some of the best bands that melodic death metal has had it’s label tagged on to, especially seeing as this is the band’s debut effort!

A little more than one minute into the first track on The Zero Hour, three things become apparent. 1) This band has gotten one of the best production jobs on a debut EP that any band from any part of the world could ask for. Simply amazing, everything sounds crystal clear and very sharp. 2) These guys either currently, or at some point in their history, worship Dark Tranquility. Their frequent use of keyboards and straightforward riffs are some of the strongest influence the Swedes have had on Ground Zero. 3) These guys know how to write a fucking chorus. The first song, Core Dead has well defined, natural progressing song sections (intro, verse, pre-chorus, CHORUS) and you can feel the energy growing as you get closer towards the final climax. Bass player/melodic singer Andrea Minolfi has a very energetic, thrash-like energy in his singing voice, and it fits these songs perfectly. Unlike some bands who’s melodious vocal chords have a way of “softening” things up a bit (read: pretty much every metalcore band who has come out in the last 4 years), Minolfi uses his voice to fuse the band’s energy with some much needed hook. The vocal melodies on this whole EP, at times, could pass for 80’s pop sung by a gruff thrasher. Some of this pop sensibility is also conveyed in the bands up-front and frequent use of keyboards to accentuate the overall melodic quality of the band. Not really being a big fan of keyboards used in metal, I have to admit that it fits quite well here, reminding me of the new Blood Stain Child method of using the guitars as more of a backbone for the melodic bleeps and bloops of the keyboard.

After the disc opener, Core Dead, the band presents the listener with a song that is quite slower than the opener, but still just as ass-kicking: Darkest Desire. The song itself is quite simple and short, but the tradeoff between harsh and clean vocals here is very professional. Backstabber is up next, and is much more similar to Core Dead in its style, though it skips the whole intro idea and gets to the point much faster. Just like the album opener, it has a headbanging verse, and another killer chorus. …And then, it ends.

At this point I figured out one more thing about this band in addition to their songwriting and production skill, they created an EP that is such a teaser!!! Even though there are only THREE songs to be found on The Zero Hour, it achieves what all demo EPs should, and that is make the listener crave more from the band. Let’s hope that Ground Zero can flex more of their songwriting skill on a full-length soon, cause three songs just is not enough to keep me satisfied when the songs are this catchy. Sure, you could argue they aren’t doing anything new, but they are doing what they do very well, and deserved to be checked out by many a metalhead.