Where
there was a major change in music style between their first album “The
Splinter Shards, The Birth Of Separation” and “Where Blood And Fire Bring
Rest”, this new album is more in the line of the metal of “Where Blood…”
. The line up only changed a little this time, althoug just after the launch of
this album, Russ (singer) and Dan left the band and there’s a new singer
called Corey.
ZAO’s
latest album is called “Save Yourself From Hell”. This has everything to do
with Dante’s book “Inferno”, in which Dante gives his opinion on what hell
looks like. Dante divides hell in 5 circles, each circle contains a certain
group of people who ‘deserve’ hell. ZAO divided the album in the 5 circles,
each circle containing 2 songs. The circles are called Limbo, The Lustful, The
Gluttonous, The Hoarders & The Spendthrifts and The Wrathful.
The lyrics of this album almost look like poems: they consist of about 12 lines,
giving written existence to the writer’s thoughts. They deal with themes like
rape, vanity and unconditional love. In all honesty: i couldn’t have figured
out these key words myself, the lyrics are kind of short and they are, as i
already said, kind of poetic. Since the HM Magazine reporter who did a ZAO
interview in HM #79 knew how to describe it, i borrowed his themes (thanks for
that!).
Now
let’s talk MUSIC here! The first song of the album, realistically called
“Intro”, is an instrumental song that sets the ‘mood’ for the album: a
dark atmosphere is being created. The second song, “Savannah”, is more
representative for the rest of the album: a great metal song with speed changes.
“Autopsy” is a faster song than “Savannah” and has some great guitar
licks.
One of the things i totally dig is songs that start in a really ‘soft’ way,
like with an acoustic guitar, and then throw a wall of guitars over that. “If
These Scars Could Speak” not only begins with an acoustic guitar, it
continually switches from the usage of an acoustic guitar to a blast of great,
distortioned guitars. The song ends with Russ screaming SCARLET whilst the song
goes faster and faster. Great!
“The Ghost Psalm”, the fifth song on the album, has this amazing guitar
thing that keeps returning, accompanying Russ’s voice. The guitars in this
song are terriffic. Definitely my favorite song of this album! The next song,
“Desire The End”, came in as second best – again, the guitars are great,
this song also has some ‘softer’ parts, which is great on an album full of
hard music. About the other songs on the album, “Dark Cold Sound”, “Skin
Like Winter” and “Kathleen Barbra”, i can be short: they’re as good as
the rest of the songs, though for me they’re not better than “The Ghost
Psalm”.
The
album ends the way it started – with an instrumental song. The song is called
“Man In Cage Jack Wilson”. I must say that i don’t really like those
intrumental songs. Usually, when i play an album, i wanna hear a band’s best
work and since i don’t like classical piano concerts and stuff, for me
instrumental songs don’t go with the best of music. I always get the feeling
that an instrumental song is put on an album because the band lacked inspiration
when they had to create songs for a new album. And on this album, having 2
instrumental songs, i kind of regret that they didn’t put on some more songs,
'cause now it feels like the album only contains 8 songs and that’s really not
that much…
In
general, i can say about this album that the guitars are great, the drums are
grand and the bass is okay as well. I especially like the constant speed changes
within the songs. Perhaps a real ‘metal head’ has other opinions on this
album, that’s why the last thing i have to say about this review is that metal
is not my favorite genre but i must say that this album is great, even for
people who aren’t into metal that much! Before i heard this album, i someone
told me that this album was even harder than Scandinavian stuff. I can’t
really agree with that, i think this album isn’t that hard. Which doesn’t
mean it’s a poppy album either!
Martijn
for
The Tooth & Nail Records FAN Homepage © 1999