Interview - Zao

To someone into heavy music, the mere mention of Zao provokes either an exclamation of admiration, or something along the lines of, "I was supposed to see them one time, but they never showed up", or both. You'd think years of lineup changes would have taken their toll on a band to the point of dissolution, but Zao refused to die, even after the departure of founding member Jesse Smith on drums, and with a new rhythm section in place and former guitarist Russ Cogdell back in the fold, they're committed road warriors.

I was one of those people who was "supposed to see them one time", back in 2000 at a long-defunct Ottawa club, and the excuse given then was something about a tattoo convention (for the record, vocalist Dan Weyandt still does tattooing, still has his own shop back home in Pennsylvania). Then in June of 2004, the band was headlining a Ferret Records tour alongside Twelve Tribes, Scarlet and Remembering Never...and disaster struck again when someone pulled the fire alarm and the building was evacuated minutes before Zao was to take the stage. So to this day, I've still never seen Zao, and I'm seriously peeved, but I will, and in the meantime I corralled Weyandt for a chitty-chat before the tour headed to Montreal. The new album is called The Funeral of God, out now on Ferret Records. Yes, it took us forever to get this piece up. Shut up!

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sd: Just as we were getting ready to do this, a friend of mine went over to Scott (Mellinger, Zao guitarist) and said, "Are you a Christian?" And he said, "Well, we believe in God." "Are you a Christian band?" "No." When did it stop being that way? Was it even before you joined?
Dan: No. It had a lot to do with [the fact] that in America, the word 'Christian' entails a Brady-Bunch, George-Bush type of stigma, and so if you say, "Yes, I'm a Christian," there's a million and one things you suddenly answer to and become. And it's not that we're embarrassed to believe in Jesus or God, but especially in the United States, the word 'Christian' has become a watered-down type of word. It means that you have no open feelings towards anybody; you're close-minded; you're pro-life and this or that. You have no cares towards anything. It's a very Republican [thing].

sd: Is this an American phenomenon?
Dan: I wasn't with [Zao] when they went overseas or here in Canada, but especially since 9/11, it's been a very generic brand of Christian who view everything like George Bush. It's an embarrassment, what 'Christian' has become.

sd: Is that why you left Solid State Records as well?
Dan: Not necessarily. We got a new label, and on the last couple albums there were no ads run, there was nothing done, there was no promotion. We were just a back-burner band that might sell a couple records.

sd: When in reality, a lot of people would think of Solid State, and [think of] Zao as the flagship band.
Dan: That was a long time ago.

sd: Does it feel like that long ago?
Dan: Pretty much ever since Liberate, we were back-shelf. [Liberate Te Ex Inferis was released through Solid State in 1999.]

sd: Where's the inspiration coming from for The Funeral of God? Why that title? As soon as I saw the ads, before I knew the name, I was thinking, "Okay, that's interesting."
Dan: It has to do with a dream I had a while ago, and it deals with the fact that people, when they lose someone they care about, say, "Oh, I wish I'd spent more time with them; I wish I knew them better." The concept is the idea of...I don't know about Canada, but down in the States it's gotten to the point where you don't need God anymore. With technology and MTV and NBC and ABC, it's like, "It's not a big deal - we can take care of ourselves." It's just a concept; it's meant to be an idea - it's not anything I think will come to pass - but it's the idea of if God decided to let Himself not be part of the picture anymore. He wasn't killed. He doesn't die of old age, or a disease. What if at one point, He decided...the Bible talks about "knock and I shall answer", but what if it got to the point where the public, like over fifty or sixty percent, just didn't want God anymore? And God said, "Well, this is my creation, and they don't want me anymore, and I'm gonna pull myself out of it. I'm gonna let myself disappear"? What would happen?

sd: What do you think would happen?
Dan: Total chaos. Armageddon.

sd: That's what the record's theme is? If you can compare it to one of the Zao albums of the past, which is most like? Or none of them?
Dan: It's very different. Musically, it's everything that we've ever done in the past, but for the first time we tried to write something for the fans. That was my idea, and everyone agreed with it. Lyrically, it's about...what if, man? What if that fifty percent of the population got their prayers answered?

sd: You think the number is that high? I have a feeling here in Canada it could very well be higher.
Dan: Back home, definitely.

sd: Do you guys think of yourselves as one of the bands that really did help erase the line between Christian bands and non-Christian?
Dan: I wouldn't say a hundred percent, but we always felt like the Bible says Jesus went to the whores and the garbagemen, and these days most of the Christian bands are just preaching to the choir. The Christian shows are ninety-five percent Christian kids. These crazy bands, the only people that come to see them are the Christians, and we always tried to write music that anyone could relate to, and I think we always tried to say, you know, "Everybody hurts. Everyone has pain and disappointment in their lives." We personally dealt with it as Christians, in Christ, and we tried to write in the sense of...not a blatantly 'Christian' album, but at the same time, there's little things that point to it.

sd: But what about the bands that aren't? Like you guys, and Spitfire - I never considered them a really Christian band either; you didn't find their albums in Christian bookstores, you didn't find them playing the Christian circuit.
Dan: Part of it is that the Bible talks about the body of Christ, and if the body were just an eye, or just an ear or a mouth, would it really be a body? And I feel like there's plenty of bands out that straight minister, and there's street-corner ministers. There's a place for people like us.

sd: What do you think you've been called to do?
Dan: I think through the friendships we've made with other bands, and the simple things like hanging out and getting to know people...a lot of people have said, "We expected you to be so much different. We expected you to be down on us for this and that, and fire-and-brimstone in our face." It's kinda sad, because there's so many people out there that feel left out. Even on a smaller scale, when people meet us they expect us to be different in the sense of condemning and being not open to anything. We have our personal beliefs and I don't think our music strays far from that. And the Christian industry has gotten to the point where there are ten thousand kids out there that'll buy a CD on a 'Christian' label. We don't want people to buy our CD because they think they're just getting a sermon. We just wanna be honest, and like I said, none of us ever denied [Christianity] through embarrassment or through a lack of faith. There's so many people who, if they find it in a Christian bookstore, their parents will let them buy it, and as long as certain labels put out CDs that are tame enough, you can go buy it there, and it could have no real connotation to anything whatsoever. We're a band - with people who believe in Christ in it.

sd: Who are the new people? There's you and Russ and Scott and two new dudes.
Dan: Steve Peck and Shawn Koschik.

sd: Where'd you find those guys?
Dan: The first band I was ever in in my life was called Seasons In The Field, and it was myself and Russ, and Steve Peck played drums for us. And Shawn came from when, in the off-time in Zao, Scott, Russ and Steve started a band called Jade Meridian.

sd: What happened to that band?
Dan: They're just kinda on hiatus now.

sd: How many more albums does Zao have? That's the question everyone has - is it for real this time? All the tour soap operas that've been well-documented by the internet press - is that all behind you now?
Dan: Yeah, for the first time. This tour has been the least stressful, best-feeling tour ever. There was one show we had to cancel, because it was set up three or four days before the date and there was a very big show that had been set up two or three months prior, and it was a fifteen-hour drive from where we were at. We haven't cancelled any shows, and things have been going good.

sd: You feel defensive about that? All the years of things being up in the air, do you ever feel like you have to be accountable to fans who question that?
Dan: In some cases, but there were problems even when I wasn't in the band, they did things like that, but for the first time we're all happy with each other. We've been on the road like seven weeks and there's still no bad blood, everything's totally cool. I think for the first time everyone wants to do the band one hundred percent.

sd: What's the biggest difference between your old label and Ferret?
Dan: There's only a couple guys who work at Ferret, and we all knew them personally. And we have full-page ads in AP and Revolver, and we never had that before; we were always split up with like three other bands. Like I said, since Liberate I think Solid State couldn't really give a crap about us; we'd sell some albums, but we were last week's news.

sd: Is it because you were so deliberately dark...like, Living Sacrifice, they were an outspokenly Christian band, and you guys...nobody could read your lyrics and automatically assume. Living Sac was an openly Christian band and all their lyrics were based on Scripture - and yours aren't. Is that what it was? A philosophical difference?
Dan: Not really, because there's still a lot of bands Solid State puts out that don't have any.

sd: Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest[1997] was a darkly poetic record - how have you progressed lyrically since then?
Dan: I think it's always been the same; the lyrics have always been personal, and being a Christian, what comes out personally is the sins I make and the struggles I go through are always accompanied by a belief in Jesus. That's what I've always written about. When I first joined the band...Splinter Shards was such an openly Christian album-

sd: What a difference between that and your first.
Dan: I'm not gonna do anything because that's what people expect; I'll always give people a hundred and ten percent of what I'm feeling inside. There's kids, Christian and non, who've said, "I felt this connection." That's what I've always wanted people to feel. One of the main things is that there's a lot of suffering, and there's a lot of anger and sadness in a lot of people, and when they find a band they connect to lyrically...I think in the Christian industry there're a lot of people who are scared to admit that they're scared or that they question things or that they're angry, because half the church is telling them that if they're angry or scared they're doing something wrong, and not following Jesus how you're supposed to. One of the things we're given as Christians isn't an honest guarantee that everything's gonna be okay for the rest of our lives. The only thing we're given is that we have someone with us through that, [who] wasn't there before. I think what a lot of people connect to is the anger, and the sadness, and the depression, and the loss.

sd: It's almost no different from a band like Disturbed, who would get up there and say almost the exact same thing, minus the part about having somebody with you. And I don't think the Christian market really likes to hear that.
Dan: I think it goes back to the American church, where you get to a church and it's gonna be lollipops and rainbows from that point on, and that's not how how it is. I think that's why there's a lot of kids in America who become a Christian for a year or two and then drop out, because when they're going through some anger or depression, they're pretty much told, "If you feel that way, you're not doing things right."

sd: I read a stat, an American stat I think, saying that if a youth wasn't still involved with a church at eighteen, they were gone.
Dan: Part of it is we're shunned because we're depressed. Especially in America, where it's very Partridge Family, 'everyone should get along and be happy and solve their problems in a day', and that's not the way it is. You have in Scripture people like David, who went through things for years and years, and struggled. People never touch on that, and what we always try to say to people is, "If you feel suicidal, if you feel depressed - you can still be a Christian and feel that way." You hopefully have some sort of outlet to put yourself into. It's like if everything's not perfect you're doing something wrong, like a mathematical equation, like if the answer isn't 'perfect', your equation's messed up. The Bible's a very dark book; there's a lot of murder and betrayal and bloodshed and fear and anger - and that's all just pushed under the blanket these days.

sd: Is that where the title Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest came from?
Dan: That's actually an old Salvation Army thing.

sd: Are you a Sal Army guy?
Dan: No, I've just always tried to gain input and inspiration from everything around me. I did some outreach in a city in Pennsylvania full of a lot of homeless and stuff, and I met some people from Salvation Army and their thing is 'blood and fire'. Something I heard in it made a lot of sense to me.

sd: Tomorrow you'll be in Montreal - do you find yourself feeling the need to find a church and be in corporate worship?
Dan: I still pray and read personally, but I mean, the church I was in told me when the first Zao record came out that I was possessed by demons, and that was that. Where I live, it was like, "If you're into that, you're a demon."

sd: You guys recorded a song on the last album called 'Free the Three' that was basically almost the same concept - do you feel like it happened to you?
Dan: We're definitely a little jaded, and the main song about it is on the split with Training For Utopia, called 'Walk On By, Walk On Me', and that's about one of the people on the worship team who told us we were demons. You're trying your hardest to get through life and be a Christian, and then you do something and everyone tells you you're demon-possessed.

sd: Do you even try to put up a fight anymore, or just walk away?
Dan: No. I think I'm at a point in my faith where [I realize] that the only thing arguing does is put a barrier between people, and I'd rather walk away, because I've prayed and I feel peace in my heart about what I believe and what I do.

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[Zao] [Ferret Records]