cold i – Μ​ε​ρ​ε​ς Ν​ε​κ​ρ​ε​ς (Dead Days)

Artist: cold i

Title: Μερες Νεκρες (Dead Days)

Release: LP / Digital

Year: 2023

Label: Scarecrow Records, Extinction Records

When cold i released the amazing Κακός Άνεμος (Wicked Wind) in 2016, I found a record that still accompanies me at regular intervals. The band’s uncanny ability to take the gothic post-punk heritage of Joy Division, The Mob, and Bauhaus and turn it into songs that capture the suffocating daily grind captivated me like no other. The 2018 follow-up, the mini LP Άνθη Γκρεμού (Cliff Flowers), found the scheme exploring its sound, improving durations and compositional structures. After five years of silence, and with an intervening pandemic, cold i are back with their new full-length LP.

Μέρες Νεκρές does not depart from the quartet’s established and characteristic sound. With eight tracks and a total length of 34 minutes, the band’s third release makes up for lost time. The group’s sound, as it unfolds on this record, remains warm, intimate, with an almost romantic sense of dangerous darkness, inviting you to listen to the stories it has to tell. From the first single, the fantastic “Μάγισσες (Witches),” which proves that cold i’s ability to compose anthems to the nether world remains unchanged. The awesome backing vocals, the bass, the atmosphere it creates and of course that chorus make it one of the songs of the year without further discussion.

From the opening title track, to its varied finale, the album unfolds the band’s compositional virtues to the fullest. Cold i’s songwriting allows them to create a record full of great tracks. At its core, Μέρες Νεκρές is an archetypal ’80s post-punk record that also keeps an eye on the resurgence of the idiom in the early 2010s, but carries at its core the legacy of dark punk such as highlighted by the homegrown legacy of bands like Γενιά Του Χάους (Chaos Generation). Cold i, however, are charting their own course.

With an emphasis on tight rhythms and solid structures, having an excellent production as an ally, Μέρες Νεκρές never lets up on the tension for a moment. In “Επωδή (Conjuration)” the stormy atmosphere created by the bass and drums provides a sense of immediacy and criticality against which the delivery of the laconic lyrics creates an interesting contrast. The follow-up “Μακριά (Far Away)” finds the band exploring their more dreamy side, only for the tension to pick up again with “Η Θλίψη Της Γης (Earth’s Sorrow)”, whose guitar work makes all the difference.

They wave goodbye,
rehearsing the escape.
With eyes like beacons for hope,
here and there.
And they have much light
that comes from deep inside:
Just like the enduring moon,
that lives in the dark.

Cold i do not attempt to reinvent the genre or explore aspects of it that stray into more alternative and independent directions. Their focus and dedication to the dark allure of punk dance, the warmth of the basement, the need to breathe in a grid of gray blocks that hide the horizon, gives their new songs a sense of timelessness. The fantastic “Οι Σιωπηλοί (The Silent)” gains interest from the first listen, as it manages to become a point of reference for the band and the album with its compositional development and the passion it conveys, always in the light of an impeccable rhythmic base.

Μέρες Νεκρές drops the curtain with a different moment. Cold i, on “Dear John”, in an evocative moment, present an English-language composition, which, by making excellent use of synths as an underlay, as well as fragile vocal performances, raises the bar of the entire release. Pulled from Britain’s post-punk scene circa 1986, the “my i is cold” fade-out will elicit a squeal. The experience of listening to the album manages to keep you captivated throughout its duration.

Cold i are back and remain arguably the premier Greek post-punk band among a plethora of capable, unique and worthy bands, part of a generation and a generation that reintroduced domestic audiences to these soundscapes. Μέρες Νεκρές is a must-hear release, not because it’s domestic, or socially sensitive, or because it has “catchy” tracks. But because it’s an album that, the more you get to know it, will assure you that it’s a companionship and a liberation in the daily battle against dysthymic apathy and social flattening. But most of all, it is a record that offers empowerment, understanding and refuge through its music and songs. Let’s start all over again.

The Greek version of this review was originally published in Rocking.gr.

Source: diyconspiracy.net