Zija’s Covert Maximalism: Organized Chaos from ATL
WRITTEN BY PAISLEY CASS - LIVE PHOTOS TAKEN BY THRASHBEARAtlanta’s underground seems to reinvent itself every few years, mutating around a new network of artists who care more about the art of gathering rather than the confinements of genre attribution. Right now, a band at the center of that motion is Zija, fronted by Danny Griffin and Holden Fincher on guitar. Over the last year the group has turned glitch, hardcore and shoegaze into something that feels equally volatile and intentional. Their upcoming single, “Death by the End of the Week” arrives October 30th via Copiaworld, a creative brand where concepts meet culture.
When I hop on the call with Danny and Holden of Zija, everyone looks seasonally inspired. Hoodies, sweaters, that Atlanta-fall gloom. It’s the kind of ordinary that emphasizes the authenticity of the music being made. This isn’t a freshly polished, label-curated band designed for a target demographic. When I tell them that they are free to jump in and make corrections as I am a yapper, in unison they respond that they are too. It’s immediately clear that conversation is going to flow easily.
One of the first things I tell them, truthfully, is that the drums on Red Cardinal Baby blew my mind. The 2024 EP, a tight twelve-minute sprint through noise and nostalgia, feels like a fever dream built on muscle memory. Every track mutates, crashes, and somehow lands gracefully. “Airport” in particular still knocks around in my head; it’s textured, messy in theory, perfect in form. Listening to that project three times in a row was how I came up with the phrase “covert maximalism”, music that feels restrained until you realize how much is actually happening underneath. I admit to the boys that I can’t quite assign them a genre, which causes Danny to grin; that ambiguous sound is kind of the point.
Where most artists would call their approach experimental, Zija treats chaos as craft. Each sound has intention; each glitch feels placed like a bead on a chain. Most songs end with a tag of a wind-chime reverberating into a sword-unsheathing sound, an homage to the soundscapes of gaming system startups that scored their childhoods.
As we talk about process, it’s obvious that collaboration drives everything. “Danny usually comes to us with a main idea,” Holden says. “Us” being Ethan on drums, Loo on bass, and Tom Sinclair as producer. The band credits Sinclair as a major factor in bringing the 2025 EP Silver to life before distributing it independently through Distrokid. Having previously released music on their own makes this upcoming release with Copiaworld all the more exciting; same intention, but now with even more momentum. “Each release is an evolution of what we made previously.” Without spoiling details, they share that “Death By the End of the Week” is true to their established form; heart-on-sleeve lyrics and the kind of production that reverberates off your bones. Holden doesn’t hesitate to call it his favorite Zija track Danny’s ever written.
As the call ends, I effusively tell them that they’ve earned a new fan. Not because I have to, but because it’s true. Atlanta’s next wave of genre-bursting is massive in sound, and Zija is at the helm of it, sword unsheathed, ready for whatever comes next.