Southern California shoegaze squad COLD GAWD have released their second and most supreme suite yet of crushing downer bliss, ‘I’ll Drown On This Earth’ on Dais Records.

From the defiant scream that kicks off album opener ‘Gorgeous’ the album rips in what singer and principal songwriter Matthew Wainwright describes as “go for it” mode. Although the bulk of the songs were written in 2022, recording sessions weren’t booked until March of 2024, which allowed ample time to refine and distill the music’s hooks, heaviness, and haze. The result is a perfect storm of distortion and dreampop, cracked love songs cloaked in swooning walls of noise. Recorded at Paradise Recorders in Anaheim, CA with Colin Knight (of post-punk unit Object Of Affection), Wainwright tracked the strings while Cameron Fonacier handled drums. The process was efficient and effective, sharpened by years of performance. Anthemic headbangers like ‘Malibu Beach House’ sound as dynamic as they do dialed-in, soaked into the bones of the players. The lyrics came last, written by Wainwright a week before recording. Moods of surreality, infatuation and melancholy flicker and fade within a fog of memory and reverb. As on ‘God Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here’, COLD GAWD’s classic but contemporary vision of shoegaze manifests intriguingly in outlier moments.

COLD GAWD live dates:
August 30 Los Angeles, CA @ Genghis Cohen $
September 8 Santa Ana, CA @ Observatory %

November 2 Seattle, WA @ Vera Project ^
November 3 Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall ^
November 4 Corvallis, OR @ C3 Ballroom ^
November 6 San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill ^
November 7 Los Angeles, CA @ El Cid ^
November 8 Phoenix, AZ @ Nile Underground ^
November 9 Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad ^
November 11 Austin, TX @ Empire Control Room ^

$ Record Release Show w/ Britty Drake and Vatican Voss
% w/ Soft Kill, Beton Arme, Concrete Elite
^ w/ Gouge Away

‘I’ll Drown On This Earth’ tracklist:

Gorgeous
Portland
All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned For A Thing I Cannot Name
Duchamp is My Lawyer
Malibu Beach House
Tappan
Nudism
Bird in Space

Photo by: Liam Wallis