Zebrahead is a Rap Rock band consisting of Ali Tabatabaee, Ed Udhus, Ben Osmundson, Dan Palmer, and Adrian Estrella providing a bizarre yet interesting mix of high-energy rock guitar and high-energy hip-hop style vocals. Over the years their style has evolved from a more funk hip-hop style in their early albums to a more refined hard rock sound, with rapping (usually by Ali, who as an actual rapper nicely makes his rapping flow with and transition to and from the non-rap vocals) mixed in. Former members include founding lead guitarist
Mostly unheard of in America, they're strangely popular in Japan. This was enough to warrant Ali and Matty being called on to perform the main theme to Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), "His World", which (along with the rest of that game's soundtrack) is arguably the best thing about that game. They also came out with a full band remix of said song, which is arguably even cooler.
They also have a thing about singing womens' cover songs, as they released a cover of "Wannabe" (yes, that "Wannabe") by the Spice Girls (yeah, those Spice Girls), and released a whole album of womens' pop covers, Panty Raid.
Members:
- Ali Tabatabaee - rapped vocals
- Ed Udhus - drums
- Ben Osmundson - bass
- Dan Palmer - lead guitar (2013-present)
- Adrian Estrella - clean vocals, rhythm guitar (2021-present)
Former members:
- Justin Mauriello - clean vocals, rhythm guitar (1996-2004)
- Matty Lewis - clean vocals, rhythm guitar (2005-2021)
- Greg Bergdorf - lead guitar (1996-2013)
This band's discography consists of:
- Zebrahead/Yellow/The Yellow Album (1998)
- Waste of Mind (1998)
- Playmate of the Year (2000)
- Stupid Fat Americans (2001; Japan exclusive)
- MFZB (2003)
- Waste of MFZB (2004; Japan exclusive)
- Broadcast to the World (2006)
- Phoenix (2008)
- Panty Raid (2009)
- Not The New Album (2010; EP)
- Get Nice! (2011)
- Call Your Friends (2013)
- Way More Beer (2014)
- The Early Years – Revisited (2015)
- Walk the Plank (2015)
- The Bonus Brothers (2017)
- Brain Invaders (2019)
- Wanna Sell Your Soul? (2020; EP)
- Brain Invaders - Deluxe Goes Instrumental (2020)
- III (2021; EP)
- II (2023; EP)
This band provides examples of
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: Averted, since Ali is actually a part of the band and the rapping is to be expected from their style.
- Anti-Love Song: A few, of different flavors, particularly "Enemy," and "Here's To You," and "Do Your Worst."
- Attractive Bent-Gender: Averted. Oh, dear gods averted
.- Although one or two members of the band have commented on how hot they thought Matty was as a girl.
- Cool Shades: Courtesy of Ed, who wears them in almost every single music video.
- Cover Version:
- "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls was covered on Waste of MFZB.
- Panty Raid is an album of cover songs originally performed by female recording artists.
- "Ready Steady Go" by L'Arc-en-Ciel was covered as a Japan-exclusive bonus track for "Call Your Friends".
- The Cover Changes the Gender: Averted - All of Panty Raid leaves the lyrics the same.
- Dissonant Serenity: "Mental Health". Ali seems crazy through most of the song in the lyrics (About a patient in a mental hospital), and when Matty's lyrics come in he sings 'All I want is to go home, just for a bit...but these padded rooms are the shit!'. Moment of clarity, then back to the nut farm.
- Dumped via Text Message: How Matty left the band. The other members didn't take it well.
- Fun with Acronyms: MFZB means "Motherfucking Zebrahead, Bitches!"
- Hot-Blooded: Hell Yeah!
- Intercourse with You: "Playmate of the Year" (The song, not the album that the song gives its title to.)
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Hoo boy, "Karma Flavored Whiskey." The song is like the soundtrack to beating the shit out of people.
- Power of Friendship: "Strength" is about this. "Hell Yeah!" also invokes it.
- Rap Rock: As mentioned above, the rock part became emphasized more starting with MFZB. Of course, the combination of rapping and rock instruments has always been their style.
- Rearrange the Song:
- After Matty and Ali were approached by SEGA to provide vocals to "His World" - the main theme of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) - the band would go on to record their own arrangement of the song.
- The Early Years - Revisited saw the band re-record a number of songs from their first three albums, with Matty singing all of the parts originally sang by Justin.
- Brain Invaders - Deluxe Goes Instrumental is (as the name suggests) the deluxe edition of Brain Invaders, minus the vocal parts of the songs.
- Sanity Slippage Song: "The Walking Dead" seems to be this.
- Self-Titled Album: Their first release, although these days it's better known as Yellow or The Yellow Album due to the album cover simply being bright yellow.
- Shout-Out:
- The aforementioned "Mike Dexter is a God..." is named after a character in Can't Hardly Wait.
- "We're Not a Cover Band, We're a Tribute Band", which aims to namecheck as many songs in Guitar Hero III as possible.
- Something Something Leonard Bernstein: "Song 10" is very heavily this, to a point that the members of the band say that the lyrics don't exist.
- Song of Song Titles: The choruses of "We're Not a Cover Band, We're a Tribute Band" reference the titles of several songs featured in, of all places, Guitar Hero III: Warriors of Rock.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Ali seems fond of this. Brixton makes use of the word "rhetoric," for starters, and several of their songs tackle major social issues by Ali basically screaming a combination of clever analogies and cusswords.
- Take Over the World: The reason for the subject of "Broadcast to the World."
