Zero_One by The Living Tombstone is a relatable, moving and mostly chaotic electronic rock album that dives into the troubles, desires and thoughts of the artist.
In 2011, 13 year old American-Israeli musician Yoav Landau started a new project and online alias on YouTube as “The Living Tombstone”. Landau, under this alias, made independent music remixes that consists of songs produced on YouTube, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, popular internet meme songs like Spooky Scary Skeletons and popular video games. The Living Tombstone’s rise to internet fame began at the age of 16, when Landau released the channel’s most known song in 2014, Five Nights At Freddy’s, an original song based on the horror game franchise of the same name. Some may know the song for being used in the movie adaptation of the game made by Blumhouse Productions years later in 2023, with a sequel released on December 5th, 2024.
However, as The Living Tombstone branched out into the music industry, Landau met a vocalist and composer by the name of Sam Haft at a karaoke party in 2016, where the two would form a partnership and The Living Tombstone would become a duo. The two would continue to make what they called “geek culture” music or what the internet has dubbed as “nerdcore” music for many years until 2017, where the two would experiment and release their first ever original song, “My Ordinary Life”.
“The song ‘My Ordinary Life’ was the first song that we released that didn’t have to do with video games or geek culture. It was a personal song that we got together and we wrote one night over an order of fried chicken.” Haft explains in an interview with Pop Culturist. Thankfully, fans of the newly formed duo were extremely impressed with the composition, the lyrics and the dark meaning of the song. “It was a big turning point for us because that was when we knew we could be something more than the video game music YouTubers.” Landau describes in the same interview.
As years went on, the duo experimented with new original music and transitioned from a duo to an entire band composed of Landau, Haft, drummer Maxime Cholley, lead guitarist Or “Orko” Kohen and lead bassist Guy Bernfeld. They announced their debut album “Zero_One”, released music videos, promoted and introduced a new aspect of the band: the members playing original characters that make up a fictional version of The Living Tombstone.
Each of the band members are represented by their own original characters with the same accompanying aesthetics, mysterious neon coloured helmet wearing beings all themed around skeletons. The characters that make up the band of the fictional version of The Living Tombstone are “Zero_One” as the ringleader and vocalist of the band, “Rust” as the lead vocalist, “Armstrong” as the lead guitarist, “Tesla” as the lead bassist and “Doc” as the lead drummer. The characters are played respectively by the members of the band.
Soon enough, as the group branched out, they soon released their debut album “Zero_One” on September 4th 2024, named after the same character created for the band. Each of the characters represent parts of the member’s personality, meaning the album mainly focuses on the wants, desires, stories and struggles of the band’s founder, Landau. Which is very fitting, since the band’s first ever surrounds Landau’s experiences and leaves open opportunities for other albums focused on the other band members, such as their upcoming album “Rust” that centers around Haft’s experiences as a musician.
“Zero_One” as an album is admittedly sporadic; the songs aren’t interconnected or placed in a certain order to tell a story. This may be an intentional choice by the band since Landau was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age and wanted to represent that in an album. Most of the songs do not share a similar theme, but tackle multiple themes at the same time in each song, like addiction, fame, desire and many more. Some of the highlights of this album are “What I Want” and “Drunk”.
“What I Want” is about depression, desire and uncertainty. The song is inspired by multiple depressive episodes that Landau experienced throughout his early career as “The Living Tombstone” when he was a teenager. The song goes over the stressful and yearning thoughts that a young person like Landau feels after being put into a position of fame, popularity and recognition. The pressure and expectations put onto a music artist, such as the push to continue making music in the same style and not growing as a musician, is expressed as a sentiment in the lyric “You can’t grow if no seed can’t be planted”.
“Drunk” is about alcoholism and escapism. It is by far one of the most popular, as well as the one of the most creative songs on the album, gaining infamy due to the often unsettling, exaggerated and borderline surreal visuals of the music video, as well as the topic of the song, since most people familiar with The Living Tombstone wouldn’t expect on of their songs to cover these tough topics. The song has a very creative progression of events; it is accompanied by loud background vocals shouting the amount of drinks the singer has had and as the verses go on, the song also eventually loses track of how many drinks have been had. The song has many creative ways to describe the concept of escapism, with lyrics such as “Don’t wake me up from this spell” and “I know I will be ugly when I feel like myself again”.
Overall, “Zero_One” by The Living Tombstone is a very entertaining listen, especially to fans of the band’s earlier works. Even first time listeners of the artist will walk away as fans due to the group’s creative storytelling, relatable topics and lyricism. Their new album “Rust” will be released in 2026.
