Cold in Berlin are stoked on their latest ‘slab of gothic doom,’ Rituals of Surrender, out October 11 on New Heavy Sounds. They broke down a track-by-track analysis of their new record.
The Power
The main riff for this track came early on in the writing process, but it took a while to turn it into a coherent song. I had thought for a long time its grinding, pulsing feel would see it take a more electronic direction, but once we had the bridge (which is pure Black Sabbath), it became clear it was going to be a stomping, 70s-influenced slice of doom-pop!
The Power became a sort of creation myth in some ways, but not quite. A birthing of some kind of entity before the earth or at the beginning of life. It includes lots of ‘big imagery’ people associate with stories like this, and I like how it sets out the stall for the idea of the female being at the center of the lyrics on this album.
Suggested reading: The Cleft by Dorris Lessing
Dark Days
This song went through the longest gestation. We took an early demo version to a trusted friend and producer in Berlin, and he basically told us the instrumentation we had wasn’t good enough, and we needed to start again. It was hard to hear, but it was great that he said that, because we were all thinking it, and the version that came together in the final weeks before we recorded it is so much better.
This song is interested in escaping the past and surviving the histories we have created for ourselves.
Suggested reading: The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lorde
Avalanche
Maya had a really strong chorus hook for this song, and the challenge was to come up with something musically that did it justice. I think the way the crushing riffs crash in captures the idea of an avalanche perfectly.
I was reading ‘Ice’ and was pretty much obsessed by the idea of chasing and being chased by the ghost of an idea, those ideas we create for ourselves that are not always the best for us, and we know are not the best, but we cannot get ourselves free.
Suggested reading: Ice by Anna Kavan
Monsters
The main guitar riff for this song was originally a bass riff, and we played it that way for a long time at shows. It’s one of the few songs we’ve written that sits better on a record than in a live set though; it came together very quickly in the studio.
This song grew quite naturally in the practice studio in terms of lyrics—I am not sure where they came from. I wanted a slow sort of desperation—a body with no life, nothing being enough, a body that isn’t doing what you wish it would and prayers to no one.
Suggested reading: Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin
Frantic
The fast one. A nod to our punkier past and a wink to the future. It came together the moment the main riff was written and barely changed after its inception.
Lyrically it’s about how stories are written for people before they are born and if we change them.
Suggested reading: Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
Temples
‘Temples’ was a late addition to the album and the track that kept us up at night right up until the wax of Rituals of Surrender was cast. Musically, there are more parts than we would normally have in a single song, and it was a headache to get them all to fit together coherently. We were still writing and rewriting it in the studio moments before recording the final version while our producer Wayne Adams was in the loo.
‘Temples’ touches on how easily the female self is eaten up by the world—being built up and stuck down by social expectations—and how few roles are open to everyone.
Suggested reading: MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
Your Body//My Church
Rituals of Surrender is a really dense album, the most layered and instrumentally rich album we have created. It was really important to have a counterpoint to that, and ‘Your Body//My Church’ is that moment. It’s the only thing we’ve ever recorded without drums and bass.
A love song about dangerous love.
Suggested reading: I Love Dick by Chris Kraus
Shadowman
Versions of ‘Shadowman’ have been in our live set for years, it’s a fun doom standard, but the violin we added in the studio helps take it to a different place.
A murder? A woman? Darkness spreading over and through? Bring to it what you will.
Suggested reading: The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
Sacred Ground
‘Sacred Ground’ requires patience from the listener, but rewards with some of the strongest melodies of the record. It builds to an epic ending but a tight, euphoric crescendo felt like the wrong thing for the mood of the album and the times we live in. So instead, it is a messy, stressful final two minutes: the musical embodiment of four people throwing everything they had at making a special piece of work.
The lyrics are about a woman put to death—perhaps a witch, perhaps not. Burning with love and burning to death. We’re beginning to see parallels with such historical crimes and climate activists.
Suggested reading: The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells
