Zola Jesus unshackles "Exhumed", the first taste of new album Okovi

Zola Jesus yesterday hinted at a return with a sinister teaser, and now we've got the malevolent noise-pop of "Exhumed" - the first glimpse of a dark new follow up to 2014's Taiga.

"Last year, I moved back to the woods in Wisconsin where I was raised," explains Zola Jesus' Nika Roza Danilova. "I built a little house just steps away from where my dilapidated childhood tree fort is slowly recombining into earth. Okovi was fed by this return to roots and several very personal traumas. While writing Okovi, I endured people very close to me trying to die, and others trying desperately not to. Meanwhile, I was fighting through a haze so thick I wasn’t sure I’d find my way to the other side. Death, in all of its masks, has been encircling everyone I love, and with it the questions of legacy, worth, and will."

"'Okovi' is a Slavic word for shackles," continues Danilova. "We’re all shackled to something - to life, to death, to bodies, to minds, to illness, to people, to birthright, to duty. Each of us born with a unique debt, and we have until we die to pay it back. Without this cost, what gives us the right to live? And moreover, what gives us the right to die? Are we really even free to choose?"

"This album is a deeply personal snapshot of loss, reconciliation, and a sympathy for the chains that keep us all grounded to the unforgiving laws of nature. To bring it to life, I decided to enlist the help of Alex DeGroot, who has been the only constant in my live band and helped mix the Stridulum EP back in 2010. It will be released on Sacred Bones, the closest group of people I’ll ever have to blood-bound family."

Producer/musician WIFE, cellist Shannon Kennedy (Pedestrian Deposit), and percussionist Ted Byrnes all also contribute.

Tracklist:

1. Doma
2. Exhumed
3. Soak
4. Ash To Bone
5. Witness
6. Siphon
7. Veka
8. Wiseblood
9. NMO
10. Remains
11. Half Life