This New Zao Song is Like “A Well-Intentioned Virus” for Your Earholes

Esteemed metal scholar Sir Axl Rosenberg had the following to say about “Observed/Observer,” the first song Zao released from their forthcoming album The Well-Intentioned Virus:

… it’s unsurprisingly killer. It’s a creative, seamless amalgamation of death metal, mathcore, and melodic post-metal. If the whole album is this good, the long wait for new Zao music will have been well worth it.

And here I am listening to another new one, “A Well-Intentioned Virus” (I’d call it the album’s title track if not for a different article) via Metal Injection, and I find myself thinking the exact same thing. I couldn’t have said it any better myself… as in, literally (not the way the kids use “literally” these days), there is no way I could’ve worded my thoughts that would’ve gotten to the heart of how I feel in such a concise and descriptive manner. Really I should just let Axl right every post on MetalSucks from now on… except that’d give you all more fodder to complain in the comments.

Drummer Jeff Gretz agrees with Axl, too. He says of the track:

“This song is a good example of how us taking our time paid off. The bulk of this song is in 14/8, which is weird for us. The music came together really quickly but getting a vocal phrasing that worked took longer. Dan was able to try a version, sit with it, and go back to it a week or so later and try something totally different. Over the course of a month, it went from a song we thought wasn’t going to work and possibly get cut from the record to becoming one of our favorites and basically the ‘title track’ for the album.”

The Well-Intentioned Virus will be out December 9 on the band’s own label. Pre-order it here.