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Zao is hailed by critics and fans alike as one of the greatest things ever to hit the Christian music ghetto, but I’m having difficulty finding the appeal. To me, they sound remarkably similar to every other tortured-animal-screaming hardcore band, and the supposedly brilliant lyrics penned by frontman Dan Weyandt are lost on me because my promo copy does not include a lyric sheet. That’s not to say that their newest record, (Self-Titled), doesn’t have its high points: "Alive is Dead" builds to a distorted, grinding roar, then suddenly falls away into a simple piano melody; Weyandt whispers his way over a gradually intensifying acoustic guitar on "Witchunter"; and "FJL" is a lovely ballad (and it’s nice to hear that Weyandt hasn’t destroyed his singing voice with all that screaming!). Unfortunately, it becomes difficult to differentiate between the other tracks, even with repeated listens, which means that although the aforementioned tracks may make it onto some of my mix CDs, I probably won’t be pulling out the full album very often.

Keep in mind, though, that I’m not particularly a fan of "extreme music." Fans of the genre will likely appreciate this album’s worth more than me. They’ll most likely also note the heavy black metal influence here (if indeed this was not present on Zao’s earlier albums-­I am not familiar with the band’s back catalogue), and will doubtless file through the lyric sheet with a fine-toothed comb, providing the final copy includes one. Chalk my dislike of this one up to premature aging.

Michial Farmer 1/10/2001