Congratulations to Zao for staying together long enough to even be able to record a tenth album! It wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for these Christian metalcore pioneers. I doubt a lot of bands even come close to the amount of line-up changes these guys went through… kicking ass for the Lord apparently is hard work!
On the opening track ‘1,000,000 Outstretched Arms Of Nothing’ they waste no time and start pummeling you right from the get-go with Zao’s trademark sludgy riffage and nearly unintelligible growls. “Entropica” is equally brutal but comes with a clean chorus, which is something they repeat a couple of times throughout the album. Right when you think you can’t think any more of this kind of abuse in comes “Human Cattle Masses Marching Forward”, one of the album’s most vicious tracks. Following that one is “Romance Of The Southern Spirit” where you’re expected to join in with a singalong in the middle of the track. The album closes with “Quiet Passenger pt. 2/The World Caved In”, an acoustic outro that finally gives you the chance to catch your breath and one that wouldn’t look out of place on an Opeth album. It did make me wonder why there aren’t more parts like this on the album because an all-around sludgefest is nice and all but it does start to blend together after a while.
“Awake?” definitely is a solid chunk of metalcore mayhem but in Zao’s impressive discography, I would have to rank it somewhere in the middle.
Score: 7 out of 10
http://www.ferretstyle.com
http://www.myspace.com/zao
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