EMPEROR ZERO

ABOUT

Emperor Zero formed in Manchester, England, in 2010. Their first gig proved to be fateful, with the band supporting The Marder for a Channel M TV show, a few weeks after The Marder had recorded the Men’s Ruin EP with legendary producer Steve Albini in Chicago. The two bands formed an immediate rapport, and the Channel M gig was immediately 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 Ben 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 at a particularly raucous gig in Prestwich.

The debut single was followed by two further singles on SWAYS — ‘Mental Health Café’ and ‘Heart of Iron’ — that 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 psychoanalytic 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 original lineup of Matthew Boswell (vocals and guitar), Howard Sherrington (lead guitar), Matt Whittle (bass), and Anh Nguyen (drums) was regularly bolstered with additional musicians including drummer Adam 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 on Ramber Records (‘Nights of the Hunter’) that revisited recordings originally made by Hurley in The Bunker.

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