Zao is one of those few bands that has completely defied everyone's attempts to pigeon-hole them. Both musically and personally. However, they have remained a constant in the hardcore music scene.

They started off as a passionate "spirit-filled" hardcore band. They released the underground favorite "All Else Failed" on an indie label. They built up a fan base with their live shows. Then they released "The Splinter Shards The Birth of Separation" on Solid State records (which is home to the rest of their releases up to this best of), which containted a lot of rerecorded songs off of "All Else Failed", in addition to some new songs. They wore their Christian faith on their sleeve and took Christian hardcore to a new level.

Then Zao underwent some major line-up changes and got a new vocalist and two new guitar players, while getting rid of the bass player. Along with the member change, a new sound emerged. Most sane bands would then change the band name. Not Zao. Instead they went and released one of the best, most influential metalcore albums ever in the Christian market. "Where Blood and Fire Brings Rest" created a buzz that spread to the mainstream, where (according to the liner notes of Legendary) Stephen Carpenter of the Deftones called the new Zao one of his favorites of the year. Other major artists also admit their undying love for the album.

That was followed quickly by a split ep with Training For Utopia, appropriately titled "Split Ep". This ep featured two songs from each artist. Musically, the Zao songs followed the same basic path as "Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest". It has one song, Skin Like Winter, that was later re-recorded for their next album, however most fans prefer the "Split Ep" version.

"Liberate Te Ex Inferis", which is Latin for "Save Yourself From Hell", brought an unexpected darkness to the Zao sound. If "Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest" was the most influential Christian metalcore album ever, then "Liberate" was the darkest one ever recorded. The artwork of the album was based around Dante's Inferno and the album contains soundclips from horror movies. The guitar tones and timing paint an exceedingly dark musical portrait.

This caused fans to murmer and gossip about Zao. The thrust of this was appearant on message boards, where people's comments can be unintentionally more sharp and bitter than they are intended. In responce to the message board trashing of Zao, they wrote the song "Trash Can Hands" and placed it in the middle of their "{Self-Titled}" album. That song condemns the "art" of gossip, and directly mentions two specific screen names of kids who trashed them. While that song was strong, and sung with passion, the whole album failed to be a good follow up to "Liberate". I personally believe that the self-titled album is one which Zao wrote and performed for themselves, without caring if the fans loved it or not. Many fans did, in fact, hate it. The album had several good, strong hardcore songs on it, but ventured into a lot of instrumental/expirimental parts which did not seem to flow well with the album as a whole.