Zao -- The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here

6/10

Before it's release, I found myself excited at the news that Steve Albini would be producing Zao's 2006 album, The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here. I've never been a big fan of Albini's work--I won't even pretend, like so many posers do, that In Utero is my favorite Nirvana album--but this seemed like a moment for the band to receive some well-deserved press attention. Albini is known for his hands off approach to producing, as well as exacting a rawer sound from the bands he produces. In retrospect, I don't think "rawer" is exactly what a band like Zao needs.
I will say this: Albini did get some good musical performances out of the band. Then new and now long-time bassist, Martin Lunn, probably lays down the most nimble and acrobatic bass performance on any Zao record ever. Guitarist (going it alone this album), Scott Mellinger, performs some of the most technical and hyperactive riffs of his career. Then new and now long-time drummer, Jeff Gretz, bangs out a stunning, kinetic, tom-bashing performance. Dan Weyandt's vocals--well, I can't tell how good Dan's vocal are because Albini chose to record them through an overdriven P.A. monitor. All the usual nuance and subtleties in his scream are reducted to a fuzzy roar. And Mellinger's guitar? He's experimenting with some interesting quiet arpeggio to loud power chord dynamics that call back to the stuff he did on 1999's Liberate Te Ex Inferis, but under Albini's microphones, the tones become somehow samey. As good as Gretz's drums do sound individually, when the whole, overly abrasive mix is put together here, they're almost a wash. Zao on their own are just the right amount of abrasive. They don't need a producer to make them more so!
Albini has taken some solid Zao material that skews purposely much heavier than the "poppier," and I use "poppier" as loosely as possible in this context, more melodic album they released previous this, 2004's The Funeral of God, and made it aurally exhausting. Every time I visit this album, I hear new, stunning things I didn't before, but I also generally find my ears getting tired after every 8-10 minutes I listen.
I would love to have heard this material under the hand of a different producer--hell, even self-produced. I want a studio album to present the material a band has written and performed in the most enjoyable fashion possible, so that I can listen to it again and again. I apprecate that Zao, as always, has tried to do something different here working with Albini, and I know Albini has his defenders, but I can't help but feel like Albini failed the band here. The only time he seems to be a good fit is on the closer, "A Last Time for Everything," when he utiilizes a tape trick (Albini famously only records to analog tape), which enhances the song's theme of mortality. Then again, how awesome would this stunning song have sounded as a whole if someone else had recorded it?

I do think Albini's presence here lended the band a critical credibility in the future, which would allow it to be featured by such organizations as NPR--almost unheard of for a band that plays this kind of music. Considering this album is only small piece of the enormous career mosaic Zao have been creating over the last nearly 30 years, maybe that was worth it.


2006 Ferret
1. Cancer Eater 2:39
2. Physician Heal Thyself 3:56
3. Everything You Love Will Soon Fly Away 3:07
4. It's Hard Not to Shake with a Gun in Your Mouth 3:53
5. Kingdom of Thieves 3:23
6. Killing Time 'Til it's Time to Die 3:02
7. There Is No Such Thing as Paranoia 3:06
8. Pudgy Young Blondes with Lobotomy Eyes 3:56
9. My Love, My Love (We've Come Back from the Dead) 2:48
10. American Sheets on the Deathbed 2:47
11. A Last Time for Everything 5:15