Zen Circus: “Evil is not around us, we are evil”

The title track of the new Zen Circus album, “Evil”, coming out on Friday 26 September, as almost always happens in their records, deals with turning on the lights on a general theme. The work develops around the idea of ​​”evil” as a great topic “removed”. Removed from the artistic, intellectual and colloquial narration, driven out in favor of rhetoric. Prohibited to the sound of ban and shitstorm. Obliterate in favor of an increasingly fake, globalized and advertising “good”. “And for this reason, evil today seems more and more normal, frightening, profound,” underlines Andrea Appino. Zen are back: irreverent and caustic as in the beginning, but mature as their age imposes, in sound and writing. “Evil”, which will be presented on tour, is one of the best records of Appino, Ufo and Karim Qqru because it unites in a non -forced social criticism, the story of feelings, disgusts and pop melodies with a mocking and punk attitude that today, in popular music, seems almost disappeared.

Andrea, the album was planned or did you realize that the written songs all spoke of a “evil”?
We realized it later. And this is a process that took place very few times in our history, with “all gifted” and with “the third world war”. Trivially we realized that the word “evil” appeared in several pieces, hence the title, naturally arrived.

On the disc there are various “evils”, from intimate and personal to those of capitalist society. What unites them and therefore what does the songs unite?
That today the evil is removed from dialogues, by the world of art, by the collective debate. Think of the Shadow Ban. If you look at social media, the good always seems to triumph, just like in songs. The truth is that today the evil is actually gigantic and frightening, it has never been so strong. So it is evident: there is something that does not come back. Why don’t we want to see him? We tell us about the disc and do it also speak, we give it space. We already did it in one piece, “Zingara”.

Is it a way to defuse it?
Yes. It should not be treated like a shadow. It should not be removed. Then, let’s face it, this sleeve division between “good” and “evil”, in reality, does not completely convince us. But if we have to choose, then it is better to investigate evil.

In “twentieth century”, irrigate the evil, coming to put names such as Putin and Gerry Scotti in the same sentence. Can popular music still mirror power?
I don’t know completely respond, I listen to little contemporary music. We like to do it. We are still cheerfully fatalists and assholes. We like to defuse things. Many of my peers say: “how much it was better before …”. In reality we are children of the 1900s, who was still a century full of darkness. In the song we remember many “children of the 1900s”, including those you mentioned. And this inevitably creates irony, an irony broken by the phrase: “only the stench of the burned bodies remains and left to rot. It remains Only the shit face we have before dying. “Because it’s okay, but up to a certain point….

In “old sluts” attached the new generations. Here too there is the Joker grin.
The “old sluts” of generation X is us (laughs, editor’s note). Not too many years ago I sang: “I hate my generation”. And it’s true, it’s still the case. Here we curs the young people because they remind us that they will be there and no longer us, they remind us that we have an expiry date. We are not really attacking young people, but we, our way of thinking.

There is one thing, however, puts everyone in agreement and sing it with great bitterness: “Fasci, friends, enemies, activists, sisters, disabled, toxic, saints, pezzing and snobs want only the sold*”.
When you talk to people it is not quite so, social networks often give this “narration of positioning” through money. But it is a theme, certainly, and we sing it. Money moves us, it is chased both by those who want to become a millionaire and by those who have to shine.

Do you remember when you wrote “is just a moment”, one of the most beautiful pieces on the disc?
Just in one of “those” moments. Together with “better than nothing” they are daughters of the end of my important relationship. It is a piece that speaks of a different “evil”, speaks of solitude. It is not depressing, it is also a song about self -determination and I think it can speak to everyone, to all generations.

The key to this work is the song “The end”: “We are evil”?
Yes. There is everything inside us, even evil. Looking for it politically and socially “out of us”, for example, it is very dangerous. Graft delusions.

Cats are back in the disc.
I’m a cat. I come from a family of Gattari. As can be seen from the disc, I go out of a long relationship. The cats were with me before, they are still today. “Better than nothing” begins with the name of my cat and is a song that I dreamed of. Just that cat, who was hungry, woke me up and allowed me to take the guitar on the fly to play the piece. In doing so, I fixed it, I remembered it, it did not vanish with the dream. Something like this had never happened to me.

In 2020 you published “The last welcoming house”, a complex album, and in 2022 “dear fucking friends”, which is a big party with guests. Is this album more a return to the origins?
“Dear fucking friends” is more a collection than a real album. The latter album is the son of various things. We have come for years of exploration of the “products” feelings and records. Here instead we recorded the straight songs, without further changes, exactly as we did in the early 90s. It is a disc that does not smoot in the edges, in the texts and in the sound. It is the opposite of my latest solo project “Humanize”. In short, we all found ourselves wanting to do the same album: “evil” was born like this.