Zao
How did the recording of “The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here” go? Smoothly? Any problems? What was it like working with Steve Albini?
It went amazingly well. We did a LOT of preperation work in terms of demo-ing the songs before we went in so the studio time wasn’t spent arguing over parts or arrangements. It was merely, “we know how this stuff is supposed to go, let’s document it.” Steve Albini is great. I wish more engineers worked like he did. He pretty much left us to our own devices. Instead of telling us “you can’t do THAT?” he would say, “oh, you want to do that? ok, let’s make it happen”. We wanted someone that would indulge all of our ridiculous demands like letting Dan use a handheld mic and overdrive a guitar amp it. They don’t teach you that’s how to record vocals in recording school so most engineers get scared and refuse to do it.
Whats the meanings behind the current album – the title, the artwork, the lyrics? Have you got much feedback yet form people that have heard it?
It doesn’t have a unified theme. The title has multiple meanings behind it. The concept of “The Fear” as an actual physical THING was something that Hunter S. Thompson used to write about a lot. Dan and I are HUGE Thompson fans. So that was easy there. “The Fear” could be our fear to quit being a band, what we would do without it. The fear of failure. The fear of snakes. Whatever. For the artwork, we wanted something that didn’t look like a typical metal album cover. Something simple and striking. One of those “love it or hate it” kind of things. The people that have heard the record have been divided, we’ve been told it’s Zao’s best music and it’s worst. People either think the production of the record is amazing or think that it sounds like a basement demo. I have no explanation or defense for any of this stuff other than that’s the record we wanted to make and we’re more than happy with it. You can’t please everyone, so we make sure we please ourselves.
Zao has been together over 10 years now, (with various line-up changes) are the messages/goals/ideals of Zao still the same? How has the band changed in views/ideals in that time?
Well, the original line-up had it’s own agenda with the Christian thing. When they all left (after the 2nd album) the whole thing changed. There is no message or goal, we’re just a band.. The band is an entity which is made up of 4 very different personalities and we can’t agree with each other sometimes. So to try to push a message to anyone would be absurd.
Do you think that the hardcore/metalcore/etc. scene was better when you started in the pre myspace/mtv2/etc. days. Do you think those things have helped, or just helped the “radio friendly” versions of what you are doing? Is there anything in the scene that pisses you off or that you’d like to see changed?
I don’t know that it’s helped really and I don’t know that it was better or worse before. It’s hard for me to say because I personally don’t have any attachement to hardcore or metalcore. To me, hardcore died when Minor Threat broke up. Seriously, once bands like Earth Crisis came on the scene and started that whole chugga-chugga tough guy thing. It was dead to me. Metalcore… I don’t even know what that is. Everytime someone points out a “metalcore” band to me, I don’t hear anything “hardcore” about it. It’s usually just really bad metal. Overall I’m seeing bands start to revert back to the hair metal band mentality of bigger amps/party/sing about fucking babes kinda thing. I thought the underground was trying to kill that stuff back in the day, not encourage it.
You have a very impressive website, do you think the internet plays an important for a band?
You’re easily impressed. haha. That thing is the bane of my existence, always a struggle to keep it up to date. The internet does and doesn’t. It’s easy to access information for people, so at one time bands have this unlimited access to people. At the same time, because the information is so readily available, I think people take it for granted. They’re too busy downloading free porn to worry about trying to find out about good music.
You’ve only being to Europe a couple of times? Do you find that you are building a following here?
I think a little more. We still do better in the States. I WISH we could come over more. I love it over there. But it’s so expensive. We lose money every time we come over. We’ll be back though.
What are your views on the current USA government, Iraq/Afghanistan? How would you like to see things changed if at all?
Let’s put it this way. I think Bush is the worst president that we’ve had in MY lifetime. Everything we’ve done in terms of Iraq and Afghanistan has been wrong. The United States thinks it has a free pass to do whatever it wants. I’m embarrased. I don’t even want to say anymore…it makes me sick.
What do you guys do when your not doing Zao? Do any of you have other bands going?
Yeah, right now I’m working on a couple different things, but mainly my duo-grind band that I was in before I joined zao (Conelrad), Dan has an instrumental stoner rock type band called The Ghost Hospital (he plays drums in it). Scott is always writing music whether it’s for Zao or something else. Marty has recently started managing a band from the Pittsburgh area.
Do you have any good tour stories?!
We almost died ouside of Seattle not to long ago. Got caught in the mountains in a massive snow storm…after almost being hit by several trucks as we were jacknifed across the road, some snow plows cleared a path so that we could get to a little inn. The Inn was buried under like 20 feet of snow, it looked like the movie The Shining. There was this weird little man behind the counter that talked to his dog and was wearing a shirt that had a picture of a horse shitting out money.
Is there a good scene going in Greensburg or do you have to travel a bit to go to a show?
Until very recently, I had been living about an hour outside of Greensburg in Pittsburgh. So I really have no idea what’s going on there. I just moved back but I hate it there. I go up to New York City a lot when I’m not on tour to avoid that place.
What and who are Zao’s biggest influences and what do you guys enjoy listening to?
All over the map, literally, we all listen to EVERYTHING… probably the type of stuff that we actually play being the least listened too. There are SOME things that we are all in agreement on: Johnny Cash, Carcass, early Metallica, Slayer, late 70’s early 80’s soft rock – Toto, Hall and Oats, Eddie Money. We’re dorks.
What touring have you got planned? A return to Europe?
We have a few more planned for the rest of the year. We’re hoping to get to Europe either by the end of 2006 or early 2007. I love it there. I can’t wait to go back, it’s just always a major investment time-wise and money-wise to do it… so we don’t get to come over as much as we’d like. But we WILL be back.
You’re big horror movie fans, what are your top 3?! Your favourite horror director? And what do you think of the current crop of horror movies that have being coming out?
We all really love the George Romero zombie films (being from the same area they were all filmed and that Romero is from, we sort of have to be). My favorite horror film direcrtors would be George Romero, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci. I think there are some good horror films coming out, but there are also TOO many remakes. No one has fresh ideas anymore. This is more of a problem with movie making in general, not just horror films. (Fulci is god!)
Tell the readers 5 facts about the band/members no one really knows!
1) Marty has every single Yes album ever released
2) Scott has a massive collection of toys, but most notably a HUGE collection of Muppet Show memorablia.
3) Dan can sleep an average of 20 hours a day on tour. It’s insane.
4) Jeff went to college to be a teacher.
5) Once as an experiment Zao put action figures on their tour rider. They actually got them a couple times.
Thanks for the interview
Answers by Jeff Gretz (drummer)