This week’s The Pit feature is ZUKØ from Brisbane, Australia and this band sounds like pure hostility bottled up and thrown through a wall.
We ended up going through their 2024 EP Hatred a few times this week and every track on it feels ready to start a riot somewhere. “Broken Neck” especially is ridiculous. The entire EP has this suffocating energy to it where nothing ever fully settles down before the next hit comes in.
The band itself is made up of Jesse Hudson on vocals, Logan Gill and Nato Laenen on guitars, Ben Matthews on bass, and Jordan Bellchambers on drums. You can tell everybody in this band is locked in too because the songs feel tight without sounding overly polished. Still rough around the edges in the way heavy music should be sometimes.
There’s definitely some Knocked Loose influence floating around in there, but honestly the energy reminded us of Silly Goose at times too. Not musically exactly, more the feeling that everything could completely derail live at any second and somehow that makes it better.
Also love that they keep the songs short. No long dramatic intros pretending to be cinematic. Most of these tracks just show up angry and immediately start throwing punches.
Australia’s heavy scene has been insane for a while now and ZUKØ absolutely deserves more attention outside of it.
If you haven’t checked out Hatred yet, start there and good luck sitting still through it.
Looking for more bands after this one? We’ve got a constantly growing Spotify playlist packed with 1000+ tracks ranging from underground heavy hitters to bigger names we can’t stop listening to. New songs get added all the time, so there’s always something new hiding in there.
Also keep an eye out every Wednesday for a new The Pit featured artist spotlight where we highlight bands we think deserve way more attention.
