Some text, if not all, has been provided by Let’s Go Publicity.
Cloud Nothings Announce New Album That is Heavy and Aggressive
WKoHDYS? is like nothing else Cloud Nothings have ever done; it’s super aggressive and heavy, very inspired by the band’s love of straight up metal. It definitely still has the scrappiness and hooks that make Cloud Nothings so special, but where the band has dabbled in more ferocious moments in the past, this one goes all in.
Cloud Nothings have always been a band that’s followed their own path, they’re super prolific and their sound has always been changing—but this record is easily the starkest shift they’ve ever made. Where so many bands start to mellow with age Cloud Nothings are going hard in the other direction. They made the record with producer Seth Manchester (Battles, The Body, Lightning Bold) and it’s the angriest, most vicious album these guys have ever made, and definitely a reflection of the state of the world with some of the most pointed lyrics Dylan Baldi has ever written. The band talked a bit about feeling a little pigeonholed by indie rock and What Kind of Hell Did You Survive? definitely feels like Cloud Nothings throwing caution to the wind and announcing a new chapter of the band in a pretty huge way.
Biography:
Like any great band, Cloud Nothings have never made the same record twice. Dropping in at any given point in their discography will return markedly different results, with every phase of their evolution held together by a distinctive group chemistry that serves as the connective tissue for all of their changes. Anyone who was already experiencing whiplash brought on by the band’s abrupt shift into the immaculate production and high-gloss power pop of 2024’s Final Summer will want to brace themselves for another seismic change with What Kind of Hell Did You Survive? Arriving more than 15 years into a creative evolution that has rarely taken a minute to catch its breath, Cloud Nothings’ tenth studio album sounds like nothing they’ve done before and is the closest they’ve come to making a full-on metal record.
The spark that ignited this change began when the band was on tour in Europe with drone metal legends Earth’s tour manager, which led them into a metal-listening rabbit hole. It began innocently with someone asking half-jokingly “Hey, remember Metallica?,” and after revisiting their canonized catalog on drives between shows, then getting deeper into more obscure metal subdivisions. The sub-genre of Funeral Doom was particularly fascinating, with key albums like Bell Witch’s single-track epic Mirror Reaper and Electric Wizard’s sludgy masterpiece Dopethrone blowing minds and opening new doors. Under this influence, Cloud Nothings got off tour and went directly into writing sessions of new, metal-informed material, ultimately creating a set of doom-charged songs that they took into their first sessions at the legendary Machines With Magnets studios. Working with engineer and co-producer Seth Manchester (who they’d wanted to collaborate with as far back as hearing his work on world-shifting albums from Lightning Bolt and Battles, among many others), they pushed the performances and sound design to places of aggression and chaos. Lyrically, every song explored a different kind of struggle, from the omnipresent global conflicts of an actively burning world to more personal hells, all of them grasping for ways out of the unfolding horrors. The band’s newfound exploration of metal expressions within the existing framework of their already explosive sound is a perfect complement for the lyrical bent of the album, and results in their most striking, most risk-taking material to date.
It would be easy to overstate how different What Kind of Hell Did You Survive? is from what came before it, but no, this is not the same Cloud Nothings we’ve always known and loved with extra distortion and a metallic scowl for effect. From the first doomy thumps that kick off opening track “World Destroyer,” there’s an undeniable integration of traditional metal into the band’s sound. The vocals are the most anguished they’ve ever been, the ever-frenentic drumming is even faster and more chaotic, and the songs are built on actual palm-muted, technical, heavy-as-possible guitar riffs. This can show up as the messy thrash of “Terror Multiples,” dissonant guitars, chunky breakdowns, and even a classic black metal finale in “Death Keeps Me Alive”, punk-metal nihilism (see in particular the glorious hatred of “This World Is Shit”), and sludgy undertones in even the relatively straightforward slower songs. Two of these, “You and I” and “That’s Life” are melodic and grim at the same time, with lurching grunge tempos and a shared plainspoken delivery that’s all the more harrowing for its clear articulation. The destruction that’s apparent in the moments of noise becomes even sharper when the band slows down and draws it into acute focus. It’s an intense ride at all speeds, closely replicating the power of the band’s live show; the fine-tuned machinery of a group who’s toured more than most for years on end translated into an unrelenting onslaught.
Even in this new extreme form, the album is grounded by the same constants that have defined every step of Cloud Nothings’ evolution. Direct songwriting that wastes no time in cutting straight to the thematic points as well as unshakable hooks. Lyrical drumming that’s almost counter-melodic, somehow flowing and precise at once. Locked-in collective playing that feels telekinetic, every instrument in lucid conversation even when screaming. What Kind of Hell Did You Survive? finds a different way into the center of these elemental components of the band’s sound, excavating dread, grief, anger, and disillusionment while ripping it up like never before.
Leave a Reply