User:Os/Fear of .Z.E.R.O.

Fear of .Z.E.R.O. was a Hardcore / Punk band active in the Tri-State(Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland) area from 2000 – 2004.

The group was heavily influenced in its early stages by bands such as NoFX, Pennywise, Greenday and later by hardcore and metal groups such as Straight-Faced, Forty Below Summer, Deftones, Korn and Nothingface. The band's style always remained unique however, mostly due to bassist and lead-singer Matt Williams' unique sense of humor and oft counter-contemporary means of composing.

Beginning
In late May of 2000, Matt Williams gave a performance at a local Wilmington talent show. The performance was witnessed by both future members of the band, Jeff Gorak and Fraser Gutteridge. Gutteridge was a member of a southeast Pennsylvania group at this point but Gorak approached Williams after the show and complimented him on his performance.

One month later, Matt Williams invited Jeff Gorak to his north Wilmington garage studio to record a two-guitar demo of NoFX's "The Decline," an 18 minute 19 second punk anthem. The final recording was extremely rough, and after playing it back, both Williams and Gorak decided to add two humorous pleas at the end: one for several thousand dollars in order to buy new recording equipment and the other for a drummer.

Over the Independence Day weekend of 2000, Matt Williams sent the recording to Fraser Gutteridge. The group from southeast Pennsylvania that Gutteridge had been a member of had recently broken up due to two members moving to the Midwest, and he agreed to join the next recording session as drummer.

For the next month, the group honed their ability to arrange music with each other and practiced several days a week. This would culminate in the recording sessions for a small demo album.

The First Demo
During the second week of August 2000, the three members met from eight o'clock in the morning until five in the afternoon in Matt Williams' garage studio. In such close confines and with the temperature often above 95 degrees, recording sessions were bound to be tense. Overall however, things went relatively smoothly. The band was also dubbed "Fear of .Z.E.R.O." during this week(see below).

The final product of these sessions was an eleven-track demo of songs. Six of the songs were written solely by lead guitarist and bassist Matt Williams while the other five were a joint effort between all three members. The demo was only sold locally and failed to make a commercial impact.

2001, 2002 and Problems
Fear of .Z.E.R.O. spent much of 2001 and 2002 playing local concerts and haphazardly recording new material. They also moved into Fraser Gutteridge's basement studio in northwest Wilmington and Matt Williams switched to solely playing bass. Problems began to arise in mid-2002 due to the group's inability to penetrate the hierarchy of the local music scene, which in Delaware has long been known to favor cover bands and groups whose members are often friends with concert organizers. From 1998 - 2004 in particular, there was very little call for music groups with original material in this area. The band, dissatisfied with running in place for the past year, decided to record an album and introduce it first in Pennsylvania, then Maryland.

The Album
Efforts began in the spring of 2003 to record songs for the new album. Armed with some new material and a few of the songs from their original demo, the group entered the studio in early April and recorded two songs: "Uptown" and "Blood." Both Matt Williams and Fraser Gutteridge had invested heavily in better audio equipment throughout 2002 and the result was vastly improved recording quality. The three members had also decided that instead of recording all parts of their songs simultaneously as they had on their demo, they would use overdubbing.

In early June, the group re-entered the studio and recorded five more songs, all of which would be included on the final release of the album along with Uptown: Why, Red, Broken, Defiance and Mr. Owns. Blood was later dropped from the album lineup. Uptown, Why, Red, Broken and Blood were all written by Matt Williams, Defiance was a joint effort between all three members and Mr. Owns was written by Fraser Gutteridge. Recording sessions were completed by June 18th.

The album was mixed down and mastered by Fraser Gutteridge through the last two weeks of July and was officially released as a six-song compact disc on August 6th, 2003 as "ZERO Stands For Nothing."

"ZERO Stands For Nothing" was much more successful than the original Fear of .Z.E.R.O. demo and garnered some airplay on Pennsylvania's WSRN and Delaware's WVUD, as well as being downloaded several times on the internet. The songs "Uptown" and "Mr. Owns" were also downloaded several times individually on Audiogalaxy and Kazaa.

End
Though they didn't realize it at the time, Fear of .Z.E.R.O. played their last show on October 31st, 2003 at Newark, Delaware's Cinema Center 3. The band, disappointed by the quick dropoff of interest in "ZERO Stands For Nothing," decided to take a break from performing and recording over the winter and resume work in early 2004. However, when the band met at their new practice room in early April 2004, they realized that their musical tastes were heading in different directions. Frustration over the music scene in Delaware, coupled with rising tensions between Fraser Gutteridge and Jeff Gorak, accelerated the eventual break-up of the group.

Late in May of 2004, drummer Fraser Gutteridge posted an explanation about the group's demise on their website. The explanation ended with a message that the group would hopefully be reuniting later in the year, after some time off. This never happened, and the band's website was shut down shortly afterwards.

Post-Fear of .Z.E.R.O.
All three members of the group are currently near completion of college degrees at the University of Delaware. Gutteridge and Gorak in Computer Science, Williams in Electrical Engineering.

Matt Williams currently plays bass and guitar for a Delaware blues/rock band Everything's Free and continues to write songs as a sideline with his project Llamajuice.

Fraser Gutteridge is working as a programmer for the University of Delaware and continues to compose sporadically. He drummed for a jazz band in Philadelphia throughout much of 2004 and 2005, and also works as an audio engineer at various concerts and theatrical productions in Delaware.

Williams and Gutteridge attempted to collaborate again on a musical project with the band Darker Down, a metal group. Other members included Keith Cooper and Phil Mataras. The effort failed to evolve mainly due to time constraints.

In September of 2006, Fraser Gutteridge was asked to sit in on a practice for Everything's Free. A week later, he was requested to join the group to replace drummer Mike Dietrich, who had recently moved to North Carolina. He accepted, and as of October 2006, both he and Matt Williams are continuing to perform with the band.

Members
Matt Williams – lead vocals, bass guitar Jeff Gorak – guitar Fraser Gutteridge – drums, backing vocals