Zaraza

Infobox musical artist
Name = Zaraza


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Origin = Montreal, Canada
Genre = Experimental music
Industrial music
Death/doom
Grindcore (early)
Years_active = 1993–2006
Label = Total Zero
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Current_members = Jacek (The DoomHammer)
Grzegorz Haus ov Doom
Past_members =

Zaraza was an experimental industrial death/doom band from Canada.

Biography

Formed in Montreal, Canada in early 1993, Zaraza was born out of a meeting between newly arrived Polish immigrant Jacek (The DoomHammer) and local Montreal industrial/noise artist Grzegorz Haus ov Doom. It was created to fully integrate the extremes of doom/death metal with industrial. At the beginning it was intended to be more of a grindcore oriented project, but soon the two members decided to give it a more doomy edge, combined with a bombastic symphonic industrial feel.

Due to the largely sampler-oriented nature of Zaraza's music, the band performs live very rarely. Its most known live-show was during a special edition of the Montreal industrial show "Late Night Atrocity Exhibition". That night, in order to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the first concert of Laibach, whose early albums (from the 1980s) the band highly reveres, Zaraza performed four covers: "Vier Personen", "Leben Tod", "Krvava Gruda Plodna Zemlja" and "Nova Akropola".

After releasing their first demo "Life Is Death Postponed" in 1995, received very positively in the underground, Zaraza released its debut CD, entitled "Slavic Blasphemy" through the Ottawa-based Musicus Phycus record label. It was released in 1997 and gathered a large number of positive reviews, including being listed as one of the Top 10 albums of 1998 by Gino Filicetti of Chronicles of Chaos webzine.

In 1999 the band recorded their second CD "No Paradise To Lose", which was supposed to include a bonus EP with 3 Laibach covers. However, lack of satisfaction with the final sound quality of the mixing process has led to a postponement of the album. All the original recordings were discarded and the resulting self-disgust resulted in the band going on hiatus till early 2002.

The same year the band performed its one and only "true" live show by opening up for Knurl and Merzbow in Ottawa, Canada.

In 2002, Zaraza re-started its activities and tackled once again the task of re-recording and remixing the entire "No Paradise To Lose" album from scratch.

November 18th 2003, the second CD "No Paradise To Lose" was finally released, containing 50 minutes of experimental industrial doom death metal. The first 50 copies of the album sold also included a 4 track single of Laibach covers titled "Montrealska Akropola [Tribute to Laibach] ".

The band disbanded in July 2006 via an official announcement on their website.

End of 2006, the band started releasing all their albums as open source audio via [http://www.archive.org/ archive.org] .

Name

"Zaraza" in Polish means a plague and in South Slavic means an infection.

Members

* Jacek (The DoomHammer) – lead vocals, drum machine, samplers, keyboards
* Grzegorz Haus ov Doom – operatic vocals, samplers, keyboards

Discography

* "Life is Death Postponed" (demo, 1995)
* "Slavic Blasphemy" (1997)
* "No Paradise To Lose" (2003)
* "Montrealska Akropola - A Tribute to Laibach" (2003)
* "Life is Death Postponed" (2004, CD-R reissue with bonus tracks)

External links

* [http://www.myspace.com/zarazadoom Zaraza] on MySpace
* [http://www.archive.org/details/Zaraza_Slavic_Blasphemy "Slavic Blasphemy" CD available for download in FLAC, Ogg Vorbis and MP3 formats]
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