On Friday, the amazing dark synthpop project Cold Cave announced a new release called Fate in Seven Lessons and dropped a dazzling new single.
Fate in Seven Lessons, which is due out on June 11, will contain seven “melancholy and emotional songs of love and longing.” It’s an unusual number of tracks for a release that puts it somewhere between an EP and a full-length album.
Cold Cave is no stranger to shorter releases. Their last proper album, Cherish the Light Years, came out way back in 2011, though they’ve since unveiled a number of singles and EPs, including their 2018 set You & Me & Infinity. That release included one of my favorite Cold Cave songs, “Glory.”
Fate in Seven Lessons will contain Cold Cave’s most recent single, the excellent “Promised Land,” one of my favorite songs of 2019. Cold Cave tend to wear their influences on their sleeves, sometimes literally. “Promised Land” features a charging melody and backing vocals that are reminiscent of Sisters of Mercy, and the album cover is nearly identical to Sisters’ 1990 album Vision Thing.
In announcing the new release, Cold Cave also dropped a new song called “Night Light” that has a bouncy beat and strumming guitar licks resembling early New Order. The flowers that adorn the cover of Fate in Seven Lessons recall the cover of New Order’s second studio album, Power, Corruption & Lies.
Cold Cave says Fate in Seven Lessons is “their heaviest and most romantic yet with brooding and sexy synth driven neo-psychedelic goth and the epitome of dreary and dreamy pop driven by synthesizers and poetry.”
Here is the complete tracklist:
- Prayer From Nowhere
- Night Light
- Psalm 23
- Love Is All
- Happy Birthday Dark Star
- Honey Flower
- Promised Land
You can pre-order Fate in Seven Lessons at Bandcamp.
