IAO

This Zorn's album is fourth release in "Music Romance" series. Don't be fooled by the name, you will find very dark romance there. Album's name, IAO (subtitled Music in Sacred Light) is inspired by the Beast and the number 666: the Cabbalistic identity of IAO, which are the initials of Isis, Apophis and Osiris, used as a magical formula in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Liner notes tell this music was inspired by cult theorist Aleister Crowley's "Magick". So, you will easily feel Zorn's focus on primal fears, Gnostic rituals and sexual occultism. Nearest by it's atmosphere to some Naked City's moments, music is radically different there.

Minimalistic electronic sounds, cold, dark, often sounds as thriller soundtrack, but sound is so realistic, that you can be scared. No, it's much more real, than movie, it's something right near you!

John's collaborators on this album are superlative: Cyro Baptista, Greg Cohen, Bill Laswell, Mike Patton, Jamie Saft, Jim Pugliese, Jennifer Charles, Rebecca Moore, and Beth Hatton.They are never playing altogether there, but just two or three of them on each song.

Sex Magick, longest album composition, is meditation drone with tribal drumming. Music is coming from nowhere, and going to nowhere... It just exists, not nervous or agressive, but just as cold dark air around you. You feel breath of eternity there.

Some songs have choral voices, "Omen" like , but again, darker and colder. With no romantic accessories. Just naked , near you... Diamanda Galas could build similar atmosphere, but her world is explosive and nervous, Zorn's world is static.

And then, at Leviathan, all the world will explodes with noisy trash metal attack, Mike Patton wordless vocals and some metallic guitar accessories over the top.

Strange, dark,cold and .... magick. No connections with heavy metal dragons and elfs though.