Eindhoven, Netherlands Stoner Rock veterans 7Zuma7 have teamed up with Ripple Music for the long-overdue vinyl reissue of their 1999 debut album “Deep Inside,” as part of the label’s “Beneath The Desert Floors” series, with pre-orders available now.
Formed in Eindhoven (NL) in the mid 1990s, 7Zuma7 was founded by singer and guitarist Jerry van Eyck, guitarist John Peate, singer and bassist Nick Sanders, and drummer Jacco van Rooy. Before settling on the name that would follow them through the European underground, the band briefly carried the gloriously ridiculous title Nymphoid Barbarians From Dinosaur Hell. They soon renamed themselves after Zuma 777, an offshore powerboat, a name that better captured the band’s sense of speed, excess, sun, sleaze, and volume.
From the beginning, 7Zuma7 stood apart from the heavier Rock scene around them. They were often placed near stoner rock, but the band never felt entirely at home with that label. Their own description was more precise, and much more entertaining: Sleazy Sludge Rock with glam and soul influences. The sound was Heavy, loose, warm, lightly Psychedelic, and driven by thick guitars, top-notch riffs, swaggering seventies grooves, and a certain wrongness that became part of the band’s identity. Their music felt like Hard Rock seen through smoke, glitter, tequila, and an old B-movie projector.
The band’s first full-length album, “Deep Inside,” was released in 1999 on Suburban Records and brought wider recognition from the European press. The record sharpened the band’s sound and pushed its image even further. For the album campaign, 7Zuma7 leaned into a deliberately “wrong” visual world, including the now-infamous photo shoot in a brothel bubble bath, surrounded by scantily dressed women, with the band looking somewhere between amused, lost, and completely at home. It was part provocation, part humor, part Glam Rock theatre, and entirely 7Zuma7.
Now this cornerstone piece of European Fuzz history is seeing a long-anticipated vinyl reissue, as part of Ripple Music‘s revered Beneath The Desert Floor series, unearthing and breathing new life into gems from the Stoner and Desert Rock underground.
7ZumaZ “Deep Inside…” (vinyl reissue) — Out August 21st on Ripple Music – Pre-Order
Tracklist:
01. Mirrorman
02. Over&Over&Over
03. Fistful of Dolls
04. One At A Time
05. Diamonds
06. Crawling
07. Savannah
08. Acid Manic
09. Quicksand
10. Heroin Chic
11. The Seeker
7Zuma7 was never just a Stoner Rock band. It was heavier than glam, dirtier than Hard Rock, stranger than Sludge, and too full of soul to be reduced to a genre. For a brief and blazing moment, they sounded like the ultimate soundtrack to a lost seventies exploitation film, played at full volume by four guys who understood the groove, swagger, humor, and strange beauty of Rock and Roll.