Their first album with Simon Mcllroy, Souls at Zero marked a shift in the band's style, moving away from the fast-paced hardcore punk influences of their early work towards slower tempos and greater experimentation.

[9] The musicians were dissatisfied with the album and were interested in new methods to expand their sound, employing samples and instruments that were unorthodox for hardcore and metal at the time.

Reinforcing this, the band hired Simon McIlroy and began to draw from influences outside of punk, such as Joy Division[10] Scott Kelly has described the writing process for the album as a first step towards a lasting, individual sound.

'"[13] However, they struggled with mixing the album, and eventually asked Alternative Tentacles owner Jello Biafra, who was experienced in using studio equipment, to join them as an additional sound engineer.

The band was inspired by hip-hop artists such as Dr. Dre in this regard, according to Scott Kelly, "We wanted to use samples to go with rhythm in a cacophonous pattern.

Steve von Till described this tour as formative to the group’s style, saying, “It was taking that material out on the road and losing ourself in the trance states induced by playing hypnotic, super-heavy loud music that we really figured out how to surrender to it.

[28] Michael Rensen called the album an "extremely weird mix" in his review for the metal magazine Rock Hard and refrained from giving a rating.

"[31] Lars Brinkmann of Spex also stressed the importance of Souls at Zero for post-metal and related genres, saying the album, "concentrated everything that hundreds of bands needed over the next 15 years to be able to rub themselves raw at the interfaces of metal/hardcore and noise/rock.

Nevertheless, to date no band has managed to unleash such violent hurricanes of suffering and to make both music halls and occupied houses tremble with voluptuous pathos.