Rising To The Masses: Root Zero

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Before the first riffs echo through the fields of Catton Park, we are diving head first into the pulse-pounding world of the New Blood Stage at Bloodstock 2024. So grab your backstage pass, tune your senses, and join us as we explore the stories, inspirations, and the relentless drive of the bands who are rising to the masses! Introducing Root Zero…

How would you describe your band to someone who’s never heard you?

We usually go with Ethereal Metal since we can’t really decide on prog/post/gothic metal. We feel it captures the ambience quite nicely.

Tell us about your band’s origin story. How did you all come together?

The name Root Zero was brought about by our lead songwriter Giacomo as a vessel to release music back in 2016, and after a number of personnel changes and a move to Cardiff, we formed a stable core lineup in 2020 and continued to grow from there. Most of us all knew each other back in Aberystwyth whilst there for university, and at different times were members of the band before getting back together in Cardiff with 2 additional members.

What song would you recommend for someone’s first listen of your band?

Describe your songwriting process. How do you create your music?

Giacomo typically composes most of the material, but we all contribute different sections and layers depending on the song. Generally the full song will be composed, all of us take away our parts from that demo and amend them to suit what we would play in daft tunings. At the same time, the vocals will be written and finished by Sasha and Giac, and in the end we get this big ambient melting pot of ideas that help make the songs denser and more fleshed out.

How do you handle creative disagreements within the band?

We’ve learned that as a 6 piece band, a democratic process is very important. It makes sure we all get an equal say, and ultimately whilst voting has its issues with even numbers, we end up typically finding good compromises that work for everyone if the vote is split. Having a dedicated way to keep track of all decisions and updates is important as well. We’ve got a messenger group chat for the general day to day communication, but a discord is absolutely vital for us to split discussions up easily into different topics so we can easily refer back.

What are your musical influences?

All of us have quite different influences, but at the core of the music it would be Anathema, Opeth, Karnivool, Type O Negative and Alcest. Alcest in particular is the biggest influence on why we moved away from just trying to be modern progressive metal to something more vibey.

What’s the story behind your band name?

It was initially meant to be Route Zero with a slogan of ‘All Roads Lead To Nothing’ but Giac’s (very hopeful) worry was that if we ever got big in America, they’d mispronounce Route haha. Also we just love trees and forest vibes. Far more mysterious than just a road.

What’s your guilty pleasure music outside of metal?

We found out in recent years that most of us are big fans of The Chicks (formerly Dixie Chicks), and half of us went to Cardiff Castle to see them on their UK tour. Fantastic night honestly, and we’d recommend anyone at least check out the song ‘Not Ready To Make Nice’ since it’s just this huge political statement song about when Republicans cancelled the band for denouncing George Bush’s war. Really heavy stuff in a completely different way.

Tell us about your most memorable live performance or tour experience.

I would say our final of Metal To The Masses but that seems a bit of an easy answer now haha. We did a Christmas show with our good friends in Karmen Field a couple of years back where I remember all of us collectively agreeing that there was something special in the set. We have no idea what it was, but there was just something about it where we all felt it had gone incredibly well and was just such an enjoyable experience.

What’s the most challenging aspect of being a metal band in today’s music industry?

Social media for sure. There’s too much of ‘playing the game’ when it comes to doing short form content and posting all the time but also bearing in mind that the social media algorithms don’t like it when you post TOO frequently. It takes time to get into, and we’re still learning, but it is a bit demotivating at times.

Any advice for other aspiring metal musicians?

Practise everything. It’s all great practising the music and making sure you’re getting it right, but if you’re not practising stage presence then it’s all wasted. Not many bands can pull off standing still on stage, especially in metal. That extends to behind the scenes stuff too. Songwriting and self-recording for good demos are improvable skills. You might not always record a great song, but it doesn’t mean you have to release it, and it’s at least practice which is always valuable.

What’s next after Bloodstock for the band?

I’m not sure I can say the title yet, but we’ve got our debut full length album in the mastering process now, with hopes of getting it out later on this year. We might do some shows in support of it, but nothing set quite yet.

How do you choose album artwork or visuals for your releases?

We’ll all generally go off looking for and suggesting different artworks and artists that we feel would fit the vibe of whatever we’ve got coming up and vote on what works best.
The artwork for our EP ‘The Weight Of What I Started’ was made by an artist called Reuben Sawyer, who I (Llyr) had found from The Absence Of Everything by Bristol gothic post-punk band Adoring. The title of the EP was suggested by Wren as it’s a standout lyric from our song Waste, which brought up a discussion of using imagery related to Sisyphus. I passed that on to Reuben who then went on to do the amazing emblem art that’s become pretty much intrinsic to the band by now. It’ll always link to our lyrics pretty much, and we have Sasha to thank for invoking a lot of imagery and symbolism through them.

What’s the most unexpected inspiration for one of your songs?

Maybe not in terms of the instrumental, but the lyrics for Burn Scars were written about the Ents taking over Isengard in Lord of the Rings. Maybe not all that unexpected for a metal band to enjoy LotR but the specificity of it surprised us non-singers when we found out.

What’s the best gig you’ve attended as a fan and why?

I’d have to say the final Palm Reader show at 2000 Trees just ‘cause it’s fresh on the brain how special and sad it was. One of the best bands to have ever done it in my opinion.- Llyr

Giac – Soundgarden at Hyde Park 2012 which the rest of us are immensely jealous of.
Sasha – Alice In Chains with Ghost supporting, Birmingham 2013. I think about a few weeks later Ghost really blew up in popularity big time and were headlining some big fests.
Wren – Holding Absence in Cardiff 2021, because that band is amazing and they’re all lovely people when we bump into them.
Rob’s – Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs at Arctangent 2023, more specifically the exact moment the main riff for Big Rig hit the crowd.
Josh’s – Metallica in Birmingham 2017. Will always describe it as one of the best days of his life.

Have you faced any challenges as an unsigned band? How do you overcome them?

Oh absolutely. A lot of it is in just getting the music out there as much as possible, but we’re very thankful to have so many great friends sharing our music and getting us on gigs so that we can play to new audiences.

How do you stay motivated during creative slumps?

Thankfully there’s a lot of us around to pick up any slack, and thankfully we’ve got a backlog of demos that we can always work on if nothing new comes to mind. It’s important to remind ourselves as well to work on stuff that’s due for release within the next few months/year when it’s needed rather than feeling like we need to constantly churn out new demos.

Root Zero are set to play The Hopical Storm New Blood Stage On Sunday 11th August 2024.