Tea Lounge
By: Ross Edwards

On a blustery evening at Park Slope’s Tea Lounge, Zevious broke out the videogame metal/jazz with nightmarish intensity. The thorny trio is a brainchild of Mike Eber, Jeff Eber, and John Deblase, but while conceiving of music that is difficult, dissonant, and dense may sound easy, the actual performance is a different beast. And Zevious is beastly — they executed every odd measure, polyrhythm, and wild polytonality masterfully. Audience members peered in wonder over their laptops as Zevious melted faces with creative grooves.

It would be wrong to say that they are in any particular genre — with apparent jazz and metal influences they straddle two complex realms and point out the similarities. Mike Eber’s stifled electric guitar led the controlled mayhem, occasionally introducing his improvisational voice in fleeting, claustrophobic melodies. The originality of his playing can hardly be done justice here — compositions and improvisations seem to express the witty, devious, and eccentric elements of his personality. He has found a perfect match in his cousin Jeff, who can do absolutely anything to the drums. And the electric bass playing of John Deblase adds an ebullient, dangerous storm of heaviness. 

Zevious has explored the dark side with tremendous results, providing turbulent songs with quirky names (“Coma Cluster,” “Mostly Skulls,” “That Ticket Exploded”) to seduce everyone’s inner demons. Zevious is capable of some heinous shit and unbelievable complexity, but thankfully you don’t have to understand it to be in awe of it.