Zero Plus Races Against Time on the Globetrotting Rock Single “Clocks”

Songwriter and bassist Mark Pontz assembles an international cast—including Black Sabbath and Dio drummer Vinny Appice, Vixen’s Julia Lage and Italian guitar virtuoso Daniele Gottardo—for an urgent new rock track about the one opponent nobody outruns.

The clock is always running.

It ticks through rehearsals and recording sessions, through careers and relationships, through the moments we waste and the ones we desperately wish we could hold onto. It waits for no musician, no dreamer and certainly no rock-and-roll band.

On “Clocks,” the new single from Zero Plus, songwriter and bassist Mark Pontz turns that universal anxiety into fuel. The result is a driving, high-energy rock song that confronts the relentless passage of time without surrendering to it. Rather than offering a quiet meditation on mortality, Zero Plus meets the subject with volume, momentum and a multinational band assembled from several corners of the rock world.

At the center of the project is Pontz, the publisher off FLL, photographer and longtime musician who wrote the song and anchors it on bass. But Zero Plus is less a conventional band than a borderless musical enterprise—a vehicle through which Pontz can match his songs with musicians whose distinctive voices serve the material.

For “Clocks,” that meant calling on a rhythm-section heavyweight with genuine hard-rock history.

Behind the drums is Vinny Appice, whose massive, deliberate playing helped define landmark chapters in the careers of Black Sabbath, Dio and Heaven & Hell. Appice joined Black Sabbath during the Heaven and Hell tour and went on to play on the band’s 1981 album Mob Rules. He later became a founding member of Dio, appearing on records including Holy Diver, The Last in Line and Sacred Heart.

That pedigree gives “Clocks” more than name recognition. Appice’s drumming brings the kind of muscular authority that cannot easily be manufactured—the sound of a player who understands that heaviness is not simply a matter of striking harder. It is about space, tension and knowing precisely when a song needs to be pushed forward.

At the microphone is Julia Lage, the Brazilian-born musician known to rock audiences as a member of Vixen, Smith/Kotzen and One More Satellite. Although widely recognized as a bassist, Lage is also a singer-songwriter, and her presence on “Clocks” underscores the collaborative freedom at the heart of Zero Plus.

Her performance gives the song its human center. Against the track’s insistent rhythmic movement, the vocal carries the emotional weight of its subject: the realization that time is not an abstract idea but a force acting on every ambition, every relationship and every life.

Then there is Daniele Gottardo.

The Italian guitarist and composer has built an international reputation for playing that combines rock virtuosity with an unusually sophisticated compositional sensibility. His work draws not only from amplified guitar music but also from jazz, classical harmony and orchestral writing—a combination that has made him a singular figure in contemporary instrumental music.

On “Clocks,” Gottardo supplies the guitar voice around which much of the track’s electricity gathers. His involvement also reinforces the geographic sweep of the project: an American songwriter and bassist, a veteran American hard-rock drummer, a Brazilian vocalist and an Italian guitar virtuoso converging on one song.

It is an arrangement that would once have required expensive travel, weeks of studio coordination and the backing of a major label. Today, musicians can exchange performances across oceans—but technology alone does not create chemistry. The challenge is making separately recorded contributions feel like one band occupying the same emotional space.

That is where “Clocks” makes its case.

The recording is not presented as a novelty collaboration or a collection of famous résumés. Its players serve the song. The track’s appeal comes from the contrast between its serious subject and its immediate rock-and-roll energy. Time may be inexorable, but Zero Plus does not respond with resignation. The music surges forward as though velocity itself might offer temporary escape.

“Clocks” also expands upon the model established by Zero Plus’ first release, “Snake in the House.” Released in November 2025, that song featured Gottardo alongside veteran keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist Teddy “Zig Zag” Andreadis.

Andreadis brought his own deep rock history to the recording. He toured as part of Guns N’ Roses’ sprawling Use Your Illusion touring ensemble and has worked with Alice Cooper, Carole King, Slash, Duff McKagan and numerous other artists.

If “Snake in the House” introduced Zero Plus as a project capable of attracting formidable players, “Clocks” makes the concept feel less like a one-off experiment and more like a mission statement. Pontz is building songs from the ground up, then surrounding them with musicians selected not merely for their credentials but for the individual character they can bring to the recording.

It is an old-fashioned rock ideal executed through a thoroughly modern process.

There is no shortage of virtual collaborations in contemporary music, but the best of them transcend the logistics behind their creation. They make geography irrelevant. They turn files sent across continents into something immediate and physical—the sensation of a band locking into a groove, amplifiers pushing air and a drummer driving everyone toward the final downbeat.

With “Clocks,” Zero Plus delivers that sensation while confronting a truth every artist eventually faces: there is never enough time. Not enough time to write every song, make every record or pursue every idea waiting in the margins.

The only answer is to begin.

And then to turn it up.

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