Zola Jesus: Okovi

“Soak,” a devastatingly powerful single off Zola Jesus’ sixth album Okovi, is the story of a serial killer’s victim who’s about to drown. But the lyrics, sung from the perspective of the victim, give her a choice in how she dies. So she decides to treat her murder like a suicide, therefore wresting power away from the killer and changing what seemed like inevitable fate.
“Take me to the water/let me soak in slaughter,” she directs, as she becomes something that cannot be killed. And as she dies, the victim slowly takes back all her earthly efforts. “Soak in decay/spoil into loam/Give what I take but it never feels enough/So I feel nothing instead,” she sings.
That song is based on personal experience: One of her friends attempted suicide, more than once. “Through writing this song, the story evolved within me, and I saw how it mirrored my own feelings inside…..What’s the point of trying to navigate life if you don’t even get to choose how it ends?” says singer Nika Roza Danilova in a statement about “Soak.”
This is just one of many intense moments that gracefully darken Okovi. Recorded in the Wisconsin woods, the album touches upon death, the force of nature and what holds us down. It seamlessly combines elements of vocal pop, ambient metal, dance music and classical, goth and industrial — genres that wouldn’t normally be heard in one song. Over that unlikely fusion Danilova sets loose her operatic voice, creating a wrenching mix of constraint and fury.