 by Steve McPherson
“I would say that heavy metal—anything metallic—is going to be pompous on some level and over-the-top,” says Eric Fratzke, guitarist and chief songwriter for instrumental metal band Zebulon Pike. We’re sitting in a sun-warmed and airy living room in his modest Saint Paul house. Daisy the dog, after greeting me with a couple of palm licks, has retreated upstairs. The hardwood floors are clean, the chairs comfy. Not exactly what you’d expect from a big metal fan. “So,” he continues, “it’s almost impossible to have some sort of metal thing and not have it be funny to some people. I think there’s some metal fans that take that stuff way too seriously. I’m kind of in between—especially with some of the song titles on the new record—everything is kind of a salute, but then there’s sort of a wink, but it’s definitely serious. It’s not a parody. There’s always homages to things, but it’s never making fun.”
 Fratzke,
34, has been having his cake and eating it too as the bassist for progressive
jazz group Happy Apple for nearly a decade now when it comes to serious fun.
Combining chops-heavy, mind-bending music with titles like “The World
Begins and Ends in your Combover” is old hat for the Apple by now, but
when it comes to naming sprawling 10- to 20-minute instrumental opuses like
those played by Zebulon Pike (or simply the Pike, as Fratzke refers to the band),
it’s a little more touchy.
“There have been so many great metal titles already that you really have
to dig deep to find something,” says Fratzke. “Sometimes I tended
to these more new age-y things, rather than Satanic [themes] or anything like
that.”
For the record, the title he’s referring to is “The Pyramid is the
Ascending Spiral,” the leadoff track from Zebulon Pike’s second
and newest album, Zebulon Pike II: The Deafening Twilight. That title
came from a new age book. The second track’s title, “And Blood Was
Passion,” was something a guitar student of his said out of nowhere during
a lesson.
“The third track is called ‘Structure of the Black Stallion,’”
he continues, “which, I don’t know what that is. It’s just
metallic wordplay. The short song is called ‘Behold the Wizard’s
Fountain.’ That was actually just Dave King [drummer for Happy Apple]
telling me about how he saw this wizard with a fountatin at Spencer Gifts. You
gotta have some humor in there. And the last tune is ‘Ashes of Xerxes,
Breath of Titan.’ Wait, did I get that right? Yes.”
It’s not all novelty gifts and mythological references for the Pike, though.
The marathon-length tracks on The Deafening Twilight represent Fratzke’s
particular vision of metal: killer riff after killer riff after killer riff.
“Basically I write most of the stuff and we come together and arrange
it as a group,” explains Fratzke. “Usually, I come up with a number
of riffs to get started; there’s a ton of riffs. I do that numerous times—just
sit down and write stuff. And then I pick out a couple of things that I think
are the main theme, even though they might not be dwelled upon in a particular
song. But I come in with three or four riffs that are supposed to go together
and show those guys. Then I move forward and sit down and listen to cassettes
and figure out what works well together. We’ll get together and learn
an eighth or a tenth of a song. And I’m just staying enough ahead of those
guys.”
 As
soon as you pop the disc in and listen to the first three minutes of “The
Pyramid …” you’ll get what he means. Beginning with Erik Bolen’s
thundering drum beat, the track kicks into gear with some seriously heavy unison
riffage from Fratzke and fellow guitarist Morgan Berkus and bassist Steve Post.
Two minutes later, the tempo has dropped and acoustic guitar has entered the
picture, creating that magical sonority that happens when brass strings collide
with overdriven nickel ones. “I think a lot of that comes from a really
big influence from Rush,” he replies when I mention the acoustic/distorted
electric combo. “Somehow I got into Rush as a really young kid. Like,
10- or 11-years-old. And I realized that that sound and the concept of having
big long instrumental things, kind of having some chops, and then having a song
that’s one side of an LP—18- or almost 20-minutes long—was
in my head from a pretty young age.”
No drum, bass or guitar solos here, though, for the most part. “This [album]
actually has two full-on guitar solos,” Fratzke laughs. “For us,
that’s a big stride towards some kind of loosening of the tightness.”
The myriad finger-twisting licks are rarely developed out past 30 seconds and
even more rarely returned to again. They form an ever-shifting and mercurial
tapestry out of which any given metal band could pull a thread and come away
with a winner. With no barking or screaming to disrupt the proceedings, the
listener is free to just ride the current. In a certain bizarre way, the album
achieves some of the goals of Eno’s ambient music: It rewards both passive
and active listening through its variation and consistency.
 Without
being intimately familiar with metal as a genre, it seems like it’s a
fertile field these days for experimentation, and at first that might seem contradictory,
given the very rigid demarcations that exist within the genre’s sub-genres.
Fans distinguish between speed metal, death metal, heavy metal, grindcore, and
on and on and on. But this turns every aesthetic decision a band makes into
a statement of purpose; when SunnO))) plays a single detuned chord at top volume
for four and a half minutes, the band is positioning itself with regard to metal’s
perceived heaviness. Metal’s strict guidelines about ritual, performance
and appreciation allow for that kind of boundary pushing. Fratzke and the men
of Zebulon Pike push it towards technical instrumental excellence while keeping
a foot planted in the kind of classic metal they grew up on.
“The generation that I’m a part of, we kind of grew up on the classic
period of metal,” says Fratzke. “It never dies, but it’s kind
of made a resurgence again. It’s kind of funny as a guitar and bass teacher:
There’s kids that come in and want to learn this stuff that I had no idea
that they’d be into, like Iron Maiden or Poison and Ratt and stuff. So
when you’re in your 30s and you’ve experienced all the big metal
bands, you have to come to it with a new thing. And either that’s going
to be mixing it with non-metal things—you know, being more math-y or prog-y
or postrock—whatever kind of ism you want to add to it. Let it grow that
way, or just push it over the top.Take it and just try to go even farther.”
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Zebulon Pike play the CD release show for Zebulon Pike II: The
Deafening Twilight on Sat., June 10 at the Seventh St. Entry with Command
Module and Ganglion. 8 p.m. $6. 21+. For more information on Zebulon Pike, check
out their official website at ZebulonPike.com.
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