London purveyors of doom and gloom. EP THE BODY IS THE WOUND out now on New Heavy Sounds.

Cold in Berlin announce their new multi-record project Wounds. Consisting of an EP, The Body is the Wound, and an album, due in 2024, Wounds is a musical vade mecum of what is to come in a fresh era for the band.

Vocalist Maya explains: “Wounds started as an idea about bringing together stories of loss and the idea that wounds can be growth, healing and that slow burn you use to fuel other fires.”

The Body is the Wound EP launches this next chapter in CIB’s journey and an exciting precursor to a new album in 2024. The four tracks cover diverse musical ground, drawing ideas from krautrock, post-punk and doom. Guiding single Dream One sees the band take their ‘dark, pulsating, choppy noise’ (CLASH) and underpin it with mechanical factory-floor rhythms and icy string machines.

The EP is the first new material from the band since the lauded 2019 album Rituals of Surrender. While Rituals ‘crushing doom laden riffs… assaulted the speakers with its steady pulse of noise’ (Narc magazine), this new collection of songs are armed with a more diverse set of audio weaponry, firing crunchy synthesiser stabs at razor-sharp guitar riffs to create a hypnotic and inventive vehicle with which to carry vocalist Maya’s ‘tightly rhythmic and unrelenting cantankerous storm’ (MOJO) which could ‘fell oaks at 100 metres’ (Q).

The lyrical themes dance around sex, murder, suicide and broken dreams, brought together in loose storytelling that allows listeners to add their own experiences and bring personal meaning.

“I wanted to loosely tie the lyrics around two ideas,” explains Maya. “Psychology, which tells us the body houses the trauma we experience and carry with us – and Buddhism, which suggests there is no growth unless from pain; we choose to hold on to suffering even though we can learn not to, and so we continue in disillusionment – aware but not aware.”

The Body is the Wound was recorded at Dalston’s Bear Bites Horse studio by Wayne Adams (Green Lung - Woodland Rites).

Cold in Berlin Bio
Formed in London in 2010, Cold in Berlin quickly became a leading light in the capital’s underground scene. Their self-released debut album Give Me Walls was an Artrocker magazine album of the year, while MOJO said it was “impossible not to get sucked in by their dark whirlpool of noise” and Loud and Quiet and Q argued over whether singer Maya was the new Patti Smith or Siouxsie Sioux.

As the band’s sound became heavier and darker, Universal-subsidiary Candlelight Records came knocking. Albums two and three, And Yet (2012) and The Comfort of Loss and Dust (2015), were released on the label to critical acclaim from influential publications across Europe, including Metal Hammer and Radio 1 in the UK. Fourth album Rituals of Surrender (2019) landed on the Doom Charts 2019 end of year favourites list. Extensive touring 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.

Rituals of Surrender reviews

'Crunch gut level heft... gothic elegance... weaving dark, shadowy tales lit only by moonlight and the flickering of candles... haunted subtlety to world ending incandescence' Metal Hammer

'Blendy hefty riffology with full-lunged brooding. Rituals of Surrender sees Cold in Berlin occupy the space between Doom and Goth. Emerging like Sabbath fronted by Siouxsie. And they do it so well. This could well be their definitive album' Aural Aggravation

The Comfort of Loss & Dust reviews

'Bone crushing riffs and sharp dynamics... places Cold in Berlin squarely in the 'ones to watch' category' Metal Hammer

'Trembling walls of fuzz... unique and spellbinding' Terrorizer

'Painful and raging with torment... listen loud and with the lights off' Power Play

Give Me Walls reviews

'A voice that could fell oaks' Q Magazine 'Ten tracks of sex-punk energy' Rock-A-Rolla

'A dark whirlpool of noise' Mojo ‘Brilliant. A band you need to see live' Clash

'Translators for our imploding society' Artrocker