Album Review

Zao - The Well-Intentioned Virus

Zao are a band who are tarred with a number of things relating to their 11 album career, so let's get it all out in the open to start off with. Firstly, the big fuck off elephant in the room, that they are a Christian metal band. While this may have been true for a long period of the bands history, even calling themselves "Christ-centered hardcore" a long time ago and some of the members may indeed be Christians. But that was then, and this is now, and to tag them simply as Christian metal is to pigeonhole a band who have said that is no longer who they are and are much more than that.

Secondly, they are metalcore. Again, looking into the history of the band, it's hard to disagree that's what they were. They toured with metalcore bands, had incredibly metalcore song titles (see "To Think of You Is to Treasure an Absent Memory"), and well, played metalcore. Which isn't itself a bad thing, good metalcore is absolutely fantastic, but there were a million and one generic metalcore bands, so getting tarred with that particular brush was always concerning.

But ever since they worked with the magnificent Steve Albini on the quite frankly ludicrously good The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here they have been anything but generic, they have moved away from metalcore and are now just really fucking good. Pantera once released some of the most terrible power metal you could ever hear, but they evolved into so much more. Much like them, Zao have become a completely different beast.

After 11 albums and a handful of EPs, Zao have now decided to do away with dealing with record labels and released this on their own instead, called 'Observed/Observer'. It's a brave step for any band, but given the quality of the previous few releases from the band, confidence is obviously high in the Zao camp and this is a purposeful stride forward for the band.

For anyone not fully versed with the history of Zao, let's just say, they have had a few members. The band have no original members in the band anymore, but it's the long time duo of Scott Mellinger and Daniel Weyandt who have been the heart and sole of this band for a long time, and with long time guitarist Russ Cogdell back in the band, we have a classic line up of the band together for the album to do what Zao do best.

And that starts with clean guitar on the opening song "The Weeping Vessel", quickly breaking into a single massive riff, huge groove and double kick drum driving the album forward to a great start. The band sounds almost like Machine Head with a much more intense vocal performance. The title track then starts off with another massive riff, now sounding like Strapping Young Lad with a hangover and ready to kill someone, the song breaks into an incredible Gojira style riff before ending with some fantastic dual lead guitar at the end, a simply awesome tune.

"Broken Pact Blues" starts with an off kilter riff, then breaks into a spacey bass-led clean singing experience, the production on the album really shines here, outstanding clarity before we are thrown back to heavy riffing again. Zao really can write a simply monstrous riff. We continue into the next song, the magnificent "Jinba Ittai", which could be the best song on the album, sounding almost like Lamb of God, more impressive riffs and song writing shows off Zao really performing at their best. The riff at 1:20 of this song could be riff of the year.

After four heavy tracks, we finally get time to come up for breath with "Apocalypse", a slow building atmospheric song, with a wonderful vocal performance, the guitars sounds like Cult of Luna's recent output, the song builds into a climactic thunderstorm, almost imploding on itself before the album hits its second massive high point in "Xenophobe", a song which sounds like the best thing Mastodon have never written, it's frankly astounding how many riffs they have managed to fit into 3 minutes.

"Haunting Pools" is a mix of heavy and clean singing around another song with heavy Gojira influences, and this is what Zao are great at, you can hear the influences throughout this album, but at no point does it sound anything but strikingly original all the way. The most interesting song on the album is "Observed/Observer", with this being the name of the new label the band are self releasing the album on, its interesting to hear a song which would be perfect to play someone for them to hear as their first every Zao song, it has everything the band are good at, it's heavy, it has both clean and heavy vocals, a song waiting to be played on dance floors in metal clubs all around the world.

The album finished on a high note with the final two songs, "The Sun Orbits Around Flat Earth Witch Trials" is a typical heavy, riff led song, relying on excellent guitar and solid drumming, finishing with a pinched harmonic riff which Zakk Wylde would be proud to call his own, and the final song "I Leave You in Peace" is a  monument to everything we have heard on the album, this song is a monolith of the biggest monsters, continually building and evolving over 7 magnificent minutes.

This album is another step forward for a band who have never been afraid to do so, it combines both of their previous albums, the unquestionably brilliant The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here and the more restrained Awake? In exactly how you would hope.

Is this the best album Zao have released? Possibly, however they are a different band now to when they first arrived, so it's difficult to compare all the albums, what we can say with confidence, is that it is a wonderful album and deserves the attention of every metal fan you can find to tell them about it.

If I hadn't already written my album of the year list, this would have walked into the top 10 without a doubt

9/10

KC

Top Tracks - "A Well-Intentioned Virus", "Jinba Ittai", "Xenophobe"