Zao - The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here - review
Zao - The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here - review
Tracklist
01. Cancer Eater02. Physician Heal Thyself
03. Everything You Love Will Soon Fly Away
04. It's Hard Not To Shake With A Gun In Your Mouth
05. Kingdom Of Thieves
06. Killing Time 'Til Its Time To Die
07. There Is No Such Thing As Paranoia
08. Purdy Young Blondes With Lobotomy Eyes
09. My Love, My Love (We've Come Back From The Dead)
10. American Sheets On The Deathbed
11. A Last Time For Everything
A review by
jupitreas June 28, 2006
The metalcore scene is vastly overpopulated already, the worst thing a band can do is to avoid evolution. Zao is simply not able to achieve the echelons of creativity that Converge or The Dillinger Escape Plan currently display. Even the band's raison d'etre, their strong Christian beliefs, is downplayed here. This leaves the music faceless and easy to dismiss as part of a crowd. The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here is a safe sort of record, an attempt to fuse all of the band's core elements into a comfortable whole, without taking any chances.
With all this said, this album is still an example of good metalcore. Dynamic and varied, the album effectively keeps me from nodding off. Highlights include "It's Hard Not To Shake With A Gun In Your Mouth" with its almost shoegaze white-noise melodic approach and the neo-grindcore attack of "American Sheets On The Deathbed". Nevertheless, as concise, hard hitting, aptly performed, memorable and heavy as this album is, the music here isn't in the end able to make me want to come back to it ever again after finishing this review. You might blame it on the oversaturation of the genre but for me, Zao's latest fails to make a lasting impression.
Comments
Comments:
6
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 Posts: 7263 |
Posts: 7263
I disagree with the part where Jupitreas said they are playing it safe. This album sounds way different from all of the others, mostly due to the recording of the drums, but also because of the slight change in the vocals, the interesting intro and outro, and there is even a guitar solo, even though it doesn't really fit the song. I mentioned this in the Zao thread but I was relieved that there wasn't any emo bullshit singing like their was in The Funeral of God. It was heavy throughout the whole album.
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Posts: 3894  |
Posts: 3894
Ok, review really didnt tell me much about the actual songs but actually gave me an unneeded education on the hardcore/metalcore scene....
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Posts: 23  |
Posts: 23
this CD was ok much better improvement from there The Funeral of God cd
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 Posts: 9570 |
Posts: 9570
Do these guys sound like shadows fall, or are they regular metalcore?
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Posts: 7263 Written by Boxcar Willy on 01.02.2010 at 18:15 Just normal metalcore that you'd find on Solid State back in the day. This album is alright, but the only album by Zao that I'd recommend right now is their compilation, Legendary.
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| Posts: 9570 |
Posts: 9570
I just listen to some zao for the first time pretty decent id give the band a 6.5 or 7
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