Zorked (adj.) - what happens when you end up thunderbaked, as in extremely stoned–or in any situation where you feel not sober. And Julia Shapiro, of Chastity Belt and Childbirth—much like everyone on this earth with a pulse—was zorked on more than one occasion in 2020. In March, she packed up her things and traded Seattle’s late-winter gloom for the perennial sunshine and seemingly endless opportunity of Los Angeles only to be forced into near-total isolation. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, she began working on her second solo album, Zorked. At the peak of her uncertainty and discomfort, she jumped into the deep end in search of something new—and found power in heavy sounds. Though Julia Shapiro found herself in a near hermit-like existence, writing and recording almost all of the album’s instruments herself, she maintains a sense of humor about all of it. At the very least, “It’s funny to force people to have to say Zorked out loud. Any other title sounded pretentious.”