For the title of his fourth album under the Zeal & Ardor banner, avant-garde metal musician Manuel Gagneux turned to ancient legend. The greif, or griffin, is a mythological creature—part lion, part eagle—that appears in many of the oldest cultures. In Gagneux’s hometown of Basel, Switzerland, the griffin figures prominently in the annual Vogel Gryff procession. “It’s basically a guy in a big old bird costume that reveals its backside to the rich part of town,” he tells Apple Music. “It’s like an 800-year-old tradition. It’s so endearing, I thought it was worth sharing with the world.” GREIF is also the first Zeal & Ardor album to feature Gagneux’s live band. “By now, people know us more from our live performances,” he says. “So, it’s more representative of what it is that I associate with Zeal & Ardor. Doing the opposite would’ve been weirder to me at this point. It felt very organic to have them involved. Just like the greif is an amalgam of animals, everyone doing their part on this record is an amalgam of us. And it’s our most eclectic record, I think, so it feels quite fitting.” Below, he comments on each track. “The Bird, the Lion and the Wildkin” “Yeah, wildkin. In all honesty, I might’ve made up that word. But as that procession happens with the greif, it’s accompanied by piccolos and snare drums. So, that’s what I tried to emulate with the whistling and the drums there. Also, it’s a melody that will return later in the record, and I thought it kind of a nice little booming opening to welcome this weird, strange world of GREIF.” “Fend You Off” “It’s the first, or one of the few times, that I use the ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ in a Zeal & Ardor song. It’s quite a personal-struggle song, not in a specific thing that happened to me, but it’s about self-preservation. Sometimes we take steps that hurt ourselves just to make way for others. So, it’s about yielding, basically, and how not good of an idea that sometimes is.” “Kilonova” “The word ‘kilonova’ is a fairly new term about two supernovas colliding, which is objectively cool. It’s also about how our spirits and our weird ideas, or our weird playing, collides on this record. It’s one of the more occult songs on the record, with references to old, old books. And it’s one I hold really dear to my heart. It started as a funk song, and then I started distorting guitars. It kind of has reminiscing factors to another band that were not planned, but they are there. I’m not going to name names, but there’s some utensils at play.” “are you the only one now?” “It was an intentional decision to make the title all lowercase. It’s about these minichapters of the record, and basically these few [lowercase] songs prefacing what is coming after them, in a thematic sense. This is another personal one. It’s about solitude and finding peace in solitude, because there’s a huge difference between loneliness and solitude. It’s about embracing being alone, and that even time perceptively wasted being alone is still time that was spent working on oneself. I’m very much a person that enjoys being alone and kind of revels in solitude. It sounds very, very mopey, but I think I’m quite happy when I’m alone.” “Go home my friend” “This is a callback, musically, to the things we did prior to this record. It’s a taste of, ‘Oh, remember this?’ I think it conveys the idea of what it wants to be quite well, and there’s no need to expand on it. It’s just, ‘OK, this is it.’ It goes exactly where it should go, and then it ends without being ruined. And I quite like that.” “Clawing Out” “I think, in many ways, it’s the most aggressive song we’ve put out, or the most intense. Because it has these mean tempo ramps that just fuel anxiety, I think. And I really love that. It all culminates in these aggressive, hardcore electro kicks, which I find so, so nice. And it kind of blends well with the metal aesthetic in a weird way. I’m very happy with this one. It’s a new flavour of heavy.” “Disease” “That’s basically about how good intentions can have bad results. Because I think I’ve hurt a lot of people just by trying to help them, and I’ve been hurt by people who’ve tried to help me. It’s not about the intent, but sometimes a helping hand is just something in the way. That sounds very cynical, but I think there’s truth to that. It kind of needs to be spoken to.” “369” “This is a reference to a Tom Waits song called ‘Clap Hands’, which itself is a reference to a Shirley Ellis song called ‘The Clapping [Song]’, which starts out ‘Three, six, nine, the [goose] drank wine’. So, it’s a cover of a cover. Or a theft of a theft. I kind of wanted to pay my dues, although it’s so obscure no one will ever know unless I explain it. So, I don’t know if my dues are really paid.” “Thrill” “This is basically one of the newer emotions that we try to convey with this record. It’s not imposing, it’s not dark and brooding or ominous. It’s basically still aggressive, but most of all excited. I think that’s an emotion that I’ve always wanted to convey with this band, and I think I finally got to do it on this record. I wouldn’t even say it’s a metal song. I’d say it’s more like a rock song.” “une ville vide” “I go on long walks at night. And the town I live in is quite sleepy, so it’s empty a lot of the time, which I find one of the nicest feelings. I wanted to convey that feeling of being in between these looming buildings, and you kind of feel like a little mouse in a huge, strange world. There’s freedom to that, and that’s what I wanted to convey with this instrumental. Also, it’s kind of a palate cleanser between songs.” “Sugarcoat” “That’s another fun one. It’s such a simple song, and it almost veers into the goofy. There’re no solos, there’s no, ‘What is that rhythm structure?’ It’s kind of just a banger. It’s silly, and it’s supposed to be that. It’s one of those songs, when I wrote it, I giggled to myself and said, ‘This is going to be so much fun live.’ And the times we’ve played it live, by the last part of it, people are just singing that little theme thing. That just makes me almost burst with glee.” “Solace” “In many ways, this is the saddest song I’ve ever written. I honestly wasn’t sure if it would make it onto this record because I thought it was too much of a whiplash moment. But now I think of it as kind of a necessity to balance things out. And it took me a really long time to write this one. I just wanted to get everything right, and I’m really happy with the result. It’s inspired by a lot of Portishead and this song The Book of Knots did with Mike Patton called ‘Planemo’. I just wanted to replicate that absolute dire, heart-wrenching situation. I’m not sure if I can do that one live because I might cry.” “Hide in Shade” “That’s basically vintage Zeal & Ardor because it’s the only song that’s older. It’s not only a callback—it’s actually from that time. It just never really got a home on an album until this one because I had to arrange it properly. So, it’s been brewing and stewing for a while. It’s just kind of a reminder of where we come from.” “to my ilk” “Another not-so-heavy track. I think this is the softest record we put out thus far, and I’m really happy with it in terms of how the three voices that we have are featured on it. It’s very distinct. It’s not too far from what people expect of us, but it kind of veers in a distinct direction. I mean, we could be blamed for selling out or whatever because it’s such a poppy track. But I think it still has this emotionality that is very much us. That can’t be denied. It’s not the best track to get the party started, but it’s still a good one.”