The first track of Cold Gawd’s new LP immediately begins with a primal yell before drowning in a haze of distortion and soft vocals laden with reverb. Shoegaze revels in the push and pull of soft and heavy, but the band pushes the dynamic even further on the sophomore album I’ll Drown on This Earth. Primary songwriter, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Matthew Wainwright talks about his softer approach this time around.

Cold Gawd frontman Matthew Wainwright was instantly allured by the contrasting elements that make shoegaze so distinctive. There’s the pummeling of distorted guitars and voices that sit softly in the mix, or the dark subject matter wrapped up in a pretty package.

He listened to Green Day, Underoath, and Dance Gavin Dance during the Warped Tour era, but hearing Whirr for the first time almost fifteen years ago as a live opener for Touché Amoré was the first time Wainwright discovered music that he could describe as “pretty.” Then there’s Nothing’s seminal album Guilty of Everything, which he feels is “like it’s the genre’s Nevermind.” The feeling was always more alluring than the band’s technical complexity.

Cold Gawd’s first studio album God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here thematically plays out like you’d imagine an album would with that kind of title. “I gave so much and never left enough for me. Now I’m empty, I feel I need. Dear God, get me the fuck out of here,” Wainwright laments during the album’s first song “Sweet Jesus Wept Shit.” Sure, there’s melody and sweet moments, but it’s a heavier and darker side to Cold Gawd. Waingwright tossed aside the cynicism after being “tired of being angry with everything.” 

“It had just dawned on me, where I was like, maybe you should be less angry about everything,” he says about his new outlook. The band’s sophomore album I’ll Drown on This Earth starts with a scream and a flurry of guitars, but there’s a sad sweetness and even hopeful romanticism that blooms on the opening track “Gorgeous” as Wainwright sings “I fantasized about all those times we’d be fine. Maybe those will come later on. Another time, another life.”

“I think a lot of everything is just too aggressive right now, and I’m all for like, listening to an ass beater…I’m in for heavy music, but I think just where I’m at right now, I love something soft and sweet and like, a show you can go to with your significant other,” he explains.  Inspired by Beach House choruses, the Kanye West album 808s & Heartbreak, and how Auto-Tune was used on Travis Scott’s Astroworld, nothing was off limits for Cold Gawd’s most sonically diverse yet emotional work yet. 

“I feel like we’ve finally created the Cold Gawd sound,” Wainwright states, explaining that he wanted to make “something so sweet and hooky” this time. “I want to be soft with the world so that way the world is soft with me back, cause if you’re constantly fighting against everything, then yeah, life’s gonna be hard,” he says.

There was a span of less than a year between the making of Cold Gawd’s two albums, but Wainwright had ample amounts of time to construct I’ll Drown on This Earth. He took extra care with the lyrics to make sure every line had meaning- oftentimes riding the line between being blunt and vague.

Most of the songs were written in 2022 but not recorded until 2024. Every 6-8 months, he would check in with the songs to see if there was anything he wanted to add. Only two songs were written between this gap period- “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned For A Thing I Cannot Name” and “Nudism.”

The band had more input into the new work than ever before. The third track “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned For A Thing I Cannot Name” is a collective creation that has special importance to Wainwright. “I’m super proud of the song “All My Life” because that’s the first song on a Cold Gawd record that was written by more than just me,” he explains. “I feel like that’s just all of our collective energy coming out in that song.”

He had the riff and ideas for the drums, but Cameron Fonacier brought new ideas to the drums, and guitarist Devin Trott was the missing piece of the puzzle when he helped with the bridge. Producer Colin Knight (of post-punk act Object of Affection) lended his hand to tweaking the snare and tom sounds- and actually brought out more of the album’s shoegaze side. 

“Bird in Space”- the last song Wainwright completed during the demo session and also the last song on the album- is what he considers to be the best song he’s ever made. “That’s the song where if I wasn’t a fan of my own band before, it would be the song that turns me into a Cold Gawd fan,” Wainwright remarks, explaining “everything about that song is exactly what I want to hear.” Clean guitar tones glide over a wave of distortion and Wainwright’s soft voice for a blissful conclusion to a record that feels emotional from start to finish. 

In November, Cold Gawd will be opening for Gouge Away on a short run in the western and southwestern US. There will still be the raw heavinesss of earlier work, but now with a softer dynamic instilled in the prevailing loud ethos of shoegaze. He’s eager to get back to creating again, even if his new album just dropped in August and there’s still live shows to play in the fall. “If I’ve got a moment, I gotta keep making songs,” he remarks. And we’ll keep listening.