EMPEROR ZERO

ABOUT

Emperor Zero formed in 2010 in Manchester, England, by Matt Boswell (vocals, guitar), Howard Sherrington (guitar), Matt Whittle (bass), and Anh Nguyen (drums). Their first gig was filmed for Channel M at Manchester’s School of Sound Recording, supporting The Marder fresh from their return from recording the Men’s Ruin EP with Steve Albini in Chicago. This was followed by further shows with The Marder in Berlin. On their return to the UK, The Marder’s bassist, Marten Hurley, recorded two Emperor Zero tracks in a studio he’d created in a disused bag factory in an industrial estate in Salford: a building that would later gain notoriety as a live venue and studio known as ‘The Bunker’.

The two tracks, ‘Man with Red Eyes’ and ‘Berlin’, became Emperor Zero’s first single, released alongside debuts by The Louche FC and Irk the River to launch the independent record label SWAYS, headed up by The Marder’s Benjamin Ward. ‘Man with Red Eyes’ was accompanied by a video directed by Steven Cherry that featured Steve Evets — star of Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric and former member of the Fall — who had met the band following a particularly raucous gig in Prestwich and agreed to appear in the video following his return from filming Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

The debut single was followed by two further singles on SWAYS — ‘Mental Health Café’ and ‘Heart of Iron’ — that both featured cover artwork by the photographer Natalie Curtis. A review of ‘Mental Health Café’ in Louder Than War noted the diverse influences on the band’s songwriting: ‘Emperor Zero are a diamond in the rough, an intelligent gang who steep themselves in history and literature but are never ones to make you feel like a lesser being. Mental Health Café takes its inspiration from psychoanalytical theory, Sarah Kane’s play 4.48 Psychosis (as referenced on the single sleeve), and, as spliced throughout the accompanying video, documentaries by Adam Curtis. The B-side on the other hand, yet another glorious example of their penmanship, deals with Christopher Columbus’ atrocities on the way to discover the New World.’

Throughout the 2010s, the band regularly collaborated with Manchester-based musicians from SWAYS and beyond for their gigs and recordings. These included drummer Adam ‘Monkey’ Dawson (The Marder, The Louche FC, BC Camplight), guitarist Jack Hardman (Ghost Outfit), guitarist Luke Byron Scott (The Louche FC, Naked (On Drugs)), clarinettist Sebastien Perrin (Naked (On Drugs)), and drummer Kyle Larkin (The Vipers). In 2013, Danny Blows joined as the band’s permanent drummer, whilst they continued to collaborate with Anh Nguyen (percussion) and Adelaide Bogros (vocals, percussion) for their live shows. Drawing influences from garage rock, post-punk, and psychedelia, Emperor Zero gigs in the 2010s were loud, abrasive, and occasionally chaotic. As Manchester Music wrote: ‘They sound like a collision of Pavement, The Fall and Sonic Youth with a great big crunchy side-order of lo-fi grunge and are thus probably the nastiest band ever to grace the Underachievers stage. That’s nasty in a good way, of course.’

In 2022, Emperor Zero released a single (‘Infernal Desire Machines’/ ‘The Invasion’) and an EP (‘Nights of the Hunter, the Bunker Sessions’) that revisited recordings originally made by Hurley in The Bunker. A debut album, and labour of love, ‘The Virgin Mary Is the Queen of Poland’ produced by guitarist Howard, will be released in early 2025.

THE BAND