Cloud Nothings are back with their new album, What Kind of Hell Did You Survive?, featuring a heavier sound than fans have come to expect from Dylan Baldi and company. The LP is out in full on January 29th, 2027 via Pure Noise Records, but you can hear the first single, “Death Keeps Me Alive,” below.
According to a press release, the genesis of What Kind of Hell Did You Survive? came from Cloud Nothings being on tour in Europe with a manager of drone metal pioneers Earth. This led them down a rabbit hole of funeral doom albums like Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper and Electric Wizard’s Dopethrone, which resulted in music inspired by “political metal and hardcore,” Baldi explained in a statement. “The songs deal with cruel governments, the importance of community, and occasionally a general rage at the state of the world.”
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“The album is our attempt to pay homage to the heavy rock music we’ve been listening to over the last few years,” he added. “Some pretty direct and popular musical influences on the tracks are Queens of the Stone Age, Motörhead, Earth, and Electric Wizard. We were feeling a little pigeonholed in the indie rock world and wanted to make a change in our sound that revealed a different facet of our interests and abilities.”
As the first preview of Cloud Nothings’ new direction, “Death Keeps Me Alive” is propelled by distorted guitar riffs, pummeling drums, and Baldi’s screamed vocals. “At home with every silver sign/ The sun decays,” he sings. “It makes a gleaming silver sound/ From far away/ The day is down/ The world is planned/ There is a road that leads to/ Where all roads began.”
“Lyrically ‘Death Keeps Me Alive’ is from the point of view of a lurking evil power that never gets fully defeated in the world and feeds off of death, war and hate, which is kind of a fun generically ‘metal’ thing to sing about,” Baldi said of the track. “I hope people hear this song and get excited for what the rest of the record could possibly sound like, and recognize that this is going to be a new version of Cloud Nothings that didn’t really have a precedent prior to this recording.”
Cloud Nothings’ most recent album, Final Summer, was released in April 2024. Pre-orders for What Kind of Hell Did You Survive? are ongoing.
What Kind of Hell Did You Survive? Tracklist:
01. World Destroyer
02. You and I
03. That’s Life
04. Terror Multiplies
05. Death Keeps Me Alive
06. Part of Something More
07. You Do the Killing Too
08. Die in Piece
09. This World Is Shit