Painkiller
Execution Ground

In my opinion, Zorn's most extraordinary creation is Naked City, one of my absolute favorite bands. A formation that has been able to stage with exceptional freedom a unique musical genre, capable of blending in even a 15-second piece irreconcilable genres (grindcore and jazz, swing and hardcore).

More than the first and highly praised self-titled album - still very beautiful - I particularly appreciate their most extreme risks (the masterpiece "Torture Garden" and, most of all, "Leng Tch'E", essentially the catharsis in music as no one has managed to stage it). 

I also love solo Zorn, as you've surely already grasped, but my heart continues to remember him in those crazy delusions reduced to scraps of seconds of pure sound violence. In those albums (even in the slow "Absinthe", practically inaccessible yet wonderful) there was a continuous tendency (achieved to perfection) to deftly navigate between a liberating orgasm and the horror of death. 

There will never again be another band like this.

Shortly after, I discovered Painkiller, another supergroup from the usual John who retraces the path traced by Naked City to rework it under different but no less shocking perspectives. We find him on vocals and alto saxophone (of course).

Accompanying him on this gloomy journey are Bill Laswell (bass), Mick Harris (vocals and drums), and, both on percussion, Hamid Drake and Tatsuya Yoshida.

The supergroup is still active but dictated by a scarce production (three albums of unreleased tracks and several live performances), also due to the energy that Zorn pours into his boundless solo production. 

Those who, like me, prefer the more violent Zorn to the more accessible one can only find joy for the ears in the three unreleased albums of Painkiller, all indispensable. Especially the first, "Guts Of A Virgin", is an unmissable punch in the stomach, bloody and devastating like a nightmare with open eyes.

But it's the cadaverous and putrid "Execution Ground" that I want to talk to you about. Five long compositions that seem like tribal-esoteric jam sessions, once again teetering between different genres and moods: dub and avant-garde metal, dark jazz and remnants of the grindcore reminiscent of Naked City and the suffocating darkness of dark ambient. It doesn't have the strong impact violence of the two previous Painkiller works ("Guts Of A Virgin" and "Buried Secrets"), but it prefers to slow down the pace, leading us directly into a real sonic black hole. 

Don't dwell on tracks with various titles (in fact, two pieces are repeated in two different versions): put the disc in the stereo and let go. Pay little attention to who plays what and why. Be confident: it is cathartic music and, as such, should be experienced.

Close your eyes and slowly let yourself be overwhelmed by this catharsis of sounds, this small and abyssal beyond. 

The times stretch until reaching a lethal sigh, but at the same time relaxing and oppressive. Yes, I find this liturgy extremely relaxing, this black mass of jazz, drowned in a universe that perhaps doesn't belong to us. From openings of unheard-of violence, with Zorn's bloody sax and the wild beating of the drums to sudden grooves of darkness.

It's not the best Painkiller album (for that I would say, with my eyes closed, the highly inspired "Guts Of A Virgin"), but "Execution Ground" is nonetheless a monolithic, statuesque, and at the same time, visceral work. Capable of taking us to the center of a haunted forest: a tribal, pagan, and zombie album. Sick and unsettling, tormented and murderous.

Not to be missed.