Zozobra

Zozobra stands as a singular New Mexican ceremony that crowns the Fiestas de Santa Fe each fall, a tradition reaching back to the mid-1920s. At its center looms a deliberately unsettling wooden figure roughly three stories high, studded with fireworks, sparklers, and noisemakers, encircled by slips of paper on which residents inscribe their most troubling private burdens so that flames may consume them. The event fuses the unsettling atmosphere of The Wicker Man with Mexican Catholic traditions and copious alcohol, then gives way to a neighborhood street fair offering fried food served on sticks. Locals regard the more recent Burning Man gathering as a draw for pretentious posturers and would-be trend followers. The name therefore suits an experimental stoner metal project perfectly. The band traces its lineage to Old Man Gloom—the English term for the effigy—which originated in Santa Fe during the late 1990s and moved to Boston a few years afterward. Zozobra operates as a duo drawn from Old Man Gloom’s rhythm section, featuring bassist Caleb Scofield and drummer Santos Montano, and came together after the 2006 dissolution of Scofield’s prior group, the major-label emo outfit Cave In. Scofield initially envisioned the project as a solo endeavor, given that he had never served as primary songwriter in his previous bands, yet Montano joined once the bassist had finished most of the first album on his own. Following the early 2007 release of Harmonic Tremors through Hydra Head Records, guitarists Adam McGrath of Cave In and Jim Carroll of Clouds were enlisted to round out a road lineup.