The Zombi Anthology

Taking a cue from Italian horror/prog band Goblin, and in particular their score for the international cut of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Pennsylvania two-piece Zombi have amassed a body of synth-heavy work that's both spacey and spooky. In 2001, bassist-keyboardist Steve Moore and drummer Anthony Paterra began releasing CD-Rs of their moody instrumentals—which also drew influence from early 1980s horror flicks like Halloween. Releases like 2004's Cosmos and 2006's Surface to Air leaned more on prog influences, including Rush's synth-heavy output of the early 1980s. Relapse is finally giving 2005's poorly distributed The Zombi Anthology (which features material from those early CD-Rs as well as 2003's Twilight Sentinel EP) a proper release. The sense of dread is what makes these songs unique (it's definitely not the titles, which run as “Sequence 1”and so on through the first nine of 12 tracks). Vintage synthesizers and sequencers make for eerie bedfellows. “Sequence 3” is the only piece to feature live guitar and drums. The rest is a chilling collection that paints macabre pictures of death and doom, although you can never accuse Zombi's music of being lifeless.