(2023) Zohra - Murder in the Temple    


Review:
​Zohra, who has previously recorded with the bands Azar Swan and Religious to Damn, releases her debut solo album, Murder In The Temple. Building on the sonic and industrial templates that defined her two former bands, she expands her sound here, creating soundscapes that drag in numerous influences and themes, whilst underpinned with a heavy, industrial beat. The album resonates with alienation, and anger, but also hope; Zohra’s beautiful, but strong, voice is often set juxtaposed against the harsh industrial beat.  For example on the track Hide Your Nature, with its industrial sounds and tribal drum beats, the vocals are soft and low down. It’s a human voice amidst the fascist grinding of gears. It’s no surprise that there is a sense of alienation in Zohra’s work. She is the daughter of a family of Afghan refugees, who now lives in New York. Her early musical introduction was the sound of Afghan folk and pop played by her father and his friends, whilst later her older sisters would dance around listening to Mary Jane Girls, Peter Gabriel, and New Order.  As a teenager, Zohra put posters of Lydia Lunch on her wall. Now, things come full circle with Lunch adding vocals and lyrics to Murder In The Temple’s title song and helping with the album art. All these influences on Zohra coalesce on the album, with Afghan melodies merged in with the beats. It’s industrial pop mixed up with goth and influences from her Afghan Muslim culture. Rather than shy away from her identity she confronts it full on here, taking the attitude that if nobody else lets her forget she’s an outsider then she will embrace it. It’s the sound of the estranged not giving a fuck that you reject her – because she has the music. And musically it rewards repeated listening, with the complexities of the sound revealing themselves. On the album opener, Discipline, there is a heavy beat that is hypnotic and relentless, full of dark, dystopian images. On Drones In A Sky Of Swallows, the beat is like ack-ack punching away at the sky whilst her vocals are like an angel finding a voice in the tumult, in the harsh brittle city. There is a melancholic dance beat of Look For Love and the atmospheric soundscape of Gospel Dirt with creeping dread and dream-like visions. Harking back to her goth days, Black Box Disco has a drum beat reminiscent of Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control. On the title track Lydia Lunch brings her distinctive sensual razor blade of a vocal to bear, like a cross between a serial killer and Marilyn Monroe. It’s a great song with a gospel/country tune subsumed by an electronic beat. There is clear anger here in the lyrics at both religion and those who attack it. Murder In The Temple is an album full of tension, of neon-lit decaying cities, driven by industrial tribal beats. But there are moments of beauty that shine through as Zohra takes her feelings of alienation and anger and creates her music, from her many influences, and declares that this is her and this is my music. Take it or leave it. — louderthanwar


   


Track List:
01 - Discipline
02 - Drones in a Sky of Swallows
03 - Hide Your Nature
04 - Look for Love
05 - Gospel Dirt
06 - Black Box Disco
07 - Murder in the Temple (feat. Lydia Lunch & Azar Swan)
08 - Empire Grave
09 - Split the Sea
10 - We're Burning


Media Report:
Genre: art pop, electronic
Country: New York, New York, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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