06.07.2025
Music
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Zabus - Shadow Genesis

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Zabus - Shadow Genesis

Shadow Genesis is the latest EP from Washington DC’s Zabus, in what has been a highly prolific period for the avant-garde post-punk outfit. Sustaining the momentum from their two most recent full-length albums, Automatic Writhing (September 2024) and Floodplain Canticles (January 2025), the new EP showcases select tracks from both of these releases; along with a brand-new song from the next Zabus album, Whores of Holyrood (August 2025).

The EP’s lead single and new video, ‘Grafhysi Fyrir Alla’, lifted from last year’s Automatic Writhing, premiered with Post-punk.com on Monday, and explores the relationship between “the societal imposition of unobtainable standards of beauty, and our obsession with physical perfection at the expense of true happiness”, as project founder and focal member Jeremy Moore explains:

“Psychopathologies like body dysmorphic disorder, at the extreme, can lead to a path of ruin, if most of your life is spent chasing a ghost—what you believe the world wants you to be. Death doesn’t discriminate. The end is always the same.”

Thematically, Zabus has framed their lyrical portraits of dystopia not as a curse of inevitability, but as a consequence of conscious choice, prompting reflection rather than offering easy answers or a definitive solution. Selected tracks for Shadow Genesis highlight Zabus’ versatility in musical style but consistency in palpable mood and atmosphere, drawing on an experimental post-punk foundation that explores themes of existentialism, spiritual evolution, and the cost of escapism. Equal parts Velvet Underground, Spacemen 3, and Joy Division, the band creates a canvas for stark introspection through unconventional song structures and bleak soundscapes. Meticulously crafted with distorted guitars, droning textures, ambient synths and haunting vocals, the music’s ability to evoke a sense of urgency and authenticity predominates. Its strength lies in its abstract journey and the ability to reflect on the darker undercurrents of contemporary existence.

The EP’s closer and title track, ‘Shadow Genesis’, which premiered on Sunday via V13 Media, also serves as a taste of things to come; taken from the next Zabus album, Whores of Holyrood, set for release in August. Moore’s lone guitar and cavernous vocal takes the new song in more of a tortured blues / dark folk direction than previous Zabus output, as Moore explains.

“I wanted to return to the instinctive blues style that pushed me into music in the first place. The song was recorded in one take and freely improvised. Lyrically, the song is about cycles of incarnation – birth and existence, death and the return to the universe and back again... The only solace from this painful cycle is birth amnesia. Stylistically, I wanted to destroy all preconceived notions of where Zabus would evolve creatively. A stripped down, skeletal arrangement was the most suitable avenue to adequately convey the vulnerability of a soul at its “end-beginning”…”

The Shadow Genesis EP was recorded at different periods between 2024 and 2025 at SV Studios, DC, with video, cover art and production by Jeremy Moore and additional engineering by Andy Baldwin (Metropolis Studios). ‘Tearful Symmetries’ and ‘Golden-rot’ appear on 2025’s Floodplain Canticles, with ‘Grafhysi Fyrir Alla’ and ‘Orphalese’ included on 2024’s Automatic Writhing, and ‘Shadow Genesis’ from the forthcoming Whores of Holyrood.

The Shadow Genesis EP by Zabus, released by Saccharine Underground, is out now on Bandcamp, Spotify, and all major streaming platforms.

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