Do you even remember 1990? Cold Spring Records does and, almost from birth, it became a place to go for industrial, ambient, and outsider electronica when the dancey-dance of MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT and its ilk just wasn’t gonna cut it for the pervading sense of grime and decay that swam in the undercurrent of Generation X. EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN and SKINNY PUPPY were there, and others, sure. But that the label has stayed true to its original path for over three decades makes it one of “those” labels, evermore a rarity; the kind where – even if every album released may not be your cup of absinthe – you find yourself at the very least respecting the creativity that went into its production and care that went into its release. So, here we are now, in 2025, with a split release featuring IGGOR CAVALERA and SHANE EMBURY moving beyond their “day jobs” in CAVALERA CONSPIRACY and NAPALM DEATH, respectively, to spread or rend their wings under the Cold Spring Records imprint.
IGGOR CAVALERA – ‘Neon Gods’: Abrasive at the start, the sense of an elevator plummeting downward into the sub-basement of Dante’s Inferno, gears grinding, cables screaming against the strain, because Hell ain’t half as full as it’s about to be, and we got a few more trips to make tonight. Robotic caterwauls fail into the silence after impact, that “battlefield after the battle” sort of stillness, only to rev the corpses and near-corpses back up again, reanimated and hungry. Salivating sparking wires and malfunctioning technoguts, as the soldiers-now-acolytes behold their AI Masters looming over them, casting shadows and spells, demanding thoughtless devotion and the sacrifice of individuality to the hive mind. Gladly these are offered up because “If it’s new it must be better, right?”. Digital sandstorms whip through, smoothing all roughness and texture into miniscule icons of sameness, graven images all. Humming in obeisance, but occasional screams of those not fully reformed (deformed?). Remembrances of the light that was, and a longing for it. Nature, flesh-man, mangled but warring against assimilation in a thousand small, but effective ways. In any way it can.
SHANE EMBURY – ‘Own Your Darkness’: An opening of gates, a folding back of supra-cosmic layers into The Abyss That Looks Back, that feel of synthetic ooze as the curtains of time brush against you. Journeying back though past failures, betrayals, utter loss of worth – these both inflicted upon and by yourself – and the blessed thought of no more tomorrow. Shining shapes glitter in the periphery, beckoning, as it were, to search for illumination, even in the deepdark of the soul, even in the catatonias vs. convulsions of mind. Coarse is the shaping, the forming of a life, and the struggle that is the lifelong fight to see both night and day for what they are, and the twilight and dusk as well. Horns in the distance blare, sound carried on over and through us, we hearers of the passing-through winds of Time, that mad eternal conductor of this orchestral plane. …and I heard, as it were the voice of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
Review By: Lord Randall
IGORR CAVALERA / SHANE EMBURY
‘Neon Gods’ / ‘Own Your Darkness’
Cold Spring Records