There are rituals surrounding all acts of surrender; the strange dance we perform before the many endings scattered throughout our lives, before the next beginning rises from the dust. Cold in Berlin's new album Rituals of Surrender, released on 11th October via London label New Heavy Sounds, offers up thunderous modern fables, crawling from the wreckage of an ordinary life - dark and hopeful - standing tall in the debris.
With new single 'The Power', Cold in Berlin return with a dark slab of gothic doom just in time to soundtrack a burning world, which they describe as, 'dark, black and infinitely heavy'. Listen now -
https://soundcloud.com/new-heavy-sounds/the-power
Over nine songs you are submerged into the dense, heavy sounds of their fourth album: A witch crawls from the ocean as the world is born looking for a new life, a woman recalls the painful love she needed to feel alive, a man cracks wide open looking for secrets, and love burns two desperate lovers - the songs are filled with heroic and overwhelming loss wrapped in the hope of what comes next.
Produced with gritty clarity and volume by Wayne Adams (Green Lung ' Woodland Rites) Rituals of Surrender opens with the grinding, hypnotic pulse of The Power and the apocalyptic rise of Dark Days, the record twists and turns as guitars crash, tempos warp and vocalist Maya stalks your thoughts with her mesmeric vocals. The rituals continue to build through Avalanche and Monsters, an edgy industrial throb and a sweeping prayer. Side A closes with Frantic a frenetic shard of fractured shellac.
When the cut-and-thrust dies down, the album reveals the band at their most fragile. The haunting schadenfreude of Your Body//My Church is a beautiful, desperate love song nestled between the ceremonial Temples and the stoner trip of Shadowman. The album-closer Sacred Ground soars from a place of Lovecraftian foreboding towards an explosion of cinematic-doom. Their grandest and most poignant piece to date.
After a collaboration with punk icon Lydia Lunch for Transmaniacon - The Strange World of Suzie Pellet concept album, vocalist Maya delivers a breath taking range of shattering vocals, casting spells of apocalyptic witchcraft, breathing life into the characters that inhabit the rituals.
Rituals of Surrender is not a crack of lightning or the drumming of rain on a window, it is an unnatural, ground shaking thunder raging through your veins. It is a suffocating howl crashing through your heart. But with the moments before any ending, surrender brings release, the serenity of escape, even from the darkest of days.
Background:
Formed in London in 2010, Cold in Berlin's self-released debut album Give Me Walls was an Artrocker magazine album of the year. Mojo said it was "Impossible not to get sucked in by their dark whirlpool of noise," while Loud and Quiet and Q argued over whether singer Maya was the new Patti Smith or Siouxsie Sioux.
As the bands' sound became heavier and darker, Universal subsidiary Candlelight came knocking. Albums two and three; And Yet (2012) and The Comfort of Loss and Dust (2015) received critical acclaim from influential publications across Europe and established the band on the alternative live scene with festival dates, nationwide tours and inclusion in the Terror and Wonder exhibition at the British Library.
Ten years since their debut Cold in Berlin continue their sonic journey in the face of nothing less than the immanent collapse of the world, as we know it.
Cold in Berlin are psyched to join the truest of independent labels New Heavy Sounds as they continue to explore the darkest corners of heavy guitar composition.
Rituals of Surrender is released on 11th October.
Pre-order now:
CD and limited edition transparent red and black smoke vinyl -https://cargorecordsdirect.co.uk/products/cold-in-berlin-rituals-of-surrender
Digital -https://smarturl.it/RitualsOfSurrender
Upcoming shows:
5th October - The Lending Room - Leeds
10th October - The Victoria - London
Previous Press Quotes
'A mesmerising set of doomy, goth-infused tracks' - Metal Hammer
'A voice that could fell oaks at 100 meters... razor-sharp guitar wizardry' - Q
'It's impossible not to get sucked in by their dark whirlpool of noise' - Mojo
https://www.facebook.com/coldinberlinband
