Zola Jesus: Okovi review – a perfect hybrid

Returning to long-term label Sacred Bones after a sojourn at Mute for 2014’s relatively poppy Taiga, Nika Roza Danilova has perfected her hybrid of industrial electronics and gothic power balladry on her fifth album. Bearing aloft a forensic inquiry into mortality and loss on the wings of her formidable voice, she soars from the shuddering strings and chilly wails of Exhumed to the trip-hop grandeur of Soak and the sweeping romanticism of Witness, via Siphon’s warm assurance of unflinching support to a friend on the edge (“We’d rather clean the blood of a living man”). An album to light the way through the darkest hours.