Our second album 'Ant Farm' is out June 3 on Crafted Sounds!
The Zells (fka “denzell”) are a five-piece rock band from Pittsburgh that consists of Jackson Rogers, Philip Kenbok, Frank DiNardo, Roman Benty, and Tyler Gallagher. They have been making and performing music together as a band since 2013. The Zells' influences span from 80’s and 90’s lo-fi rock to contemporary DIY and beyond.
"The quintet’s sophomore LP, Ant Farm (out June 3 on Crafted Sounds), is not just their best, most refined, transfixing, and emotionally seizing project yet, but a uniquely articulate statement about our generational plight. Twelve songs that capture the nihilistic bleakness of toiling in an era of historic social inequality while the very institutions we’re indebted to crumble into the dusty terrain of a world that's burning toward its apocalyptic conclusion.
The gang drafted a personal sheet of basement indie who’s who’s that doubles as a useful RIYL list. Adam Reich (Titus Andronicus), Jordyn Blakely (Smile Machine, Bartees Strange, Stove, Maneka), Davey Jones (Lost Boy?) and RJ Gordon (Baked, Titus Andronicus) make musical cameos, while Gordon engineered and mixed the whole shebang and Big Ups’ Amar Lal mastered it. The Zells have been and always will be proudly lo-fi like their idols in Sebadoh and Guided By Voices, but the songs on Ant Farm sizzle, pop, thrash, and moisten the eyes in a way their previous recordings didn’t, and that's largely thanks to the sleeker, roomier production. Most crucially, it’s the elevated songwriting maneuvers that make Ant Farm feel like the album the band have spent the last half-decade working toward."
- Eli Enis, @eli_enis
