Cold Gawd - Glory2
Originally from Rancho Cucamonga, California, Cold Gawd belong to a generation of American bands that has considerably blurred the boundaries between shoegaze, post-hardcore, emo and alternative rock. Since forming in 2020 around vocalist and guitarist Matthew Wainwright, the group has certainly embraced the enormous distorted guitars and layers of reverb associated with shoegaze, but it has rarely seemed interested in simply reproducing the familiar vocabulary of the genre. Hardcore has always provided an important part of its physical intensity, while emo, R&B, hip-hop and atmospheric pop have gradually found their way into a musical identity that has become increasingly difficult to classify. With the six-track Glory2, released on August 28, 2026 through Dais Records, Cold Gawd pushes this evolution further and begins to suggest what its music might become once shoegaze is treated as a starting point rather than a destination.
The group's first full-length album, God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here, released in 2022, presented Cold Gawd at its most imposing. Its guitars were dense and saturated, while melodies frequently appeared trapped inside an almost claustrophobic mass of sound. There was beauty in those songs, but it was constantly struggling against something heavier and more abrasive. Two years later, I’ll Drown On This Earth began opening considerably more space inside that formula. The arrangements became broader and more contemplative, and it was already becoming apparent that Wainwright did not want Cold Gawd to become permanently associated with one particular interpretation of shoegaze.
Glory2 continues that movement, but its emotional background is equally important. The EP follows an intense period of touring during which something that had once represented an artistic dream gradually acquired many of the characteristics of ordinary work. Spending a life making music and travelling with a band may appear romantic from the outside, but constant touring also produces exhaustion, distance from family and friends and the peculiar feeling of repeatedly leaving home just as you begin to settle back into it. The six songs on Glory2 appear to have absorbed some of that contradiction, and much of the record is concerned with what remains emotionally after the excitement and noise have subsided.
The opening title track makes the band's changing priorities immediately apparent. “Glory2” largely avoids the enormous distorted guitars that listeners might expect and instead develops around electronic percussion, 808s, slightly fractured breakbeats and bright synthesizers. Hip-hop and electronic music become part of the rhythmic vocabulary, creating one of the most obvious departures from conventional shoegaze that Cold Gawd has recorded so far. Rather than merely adding electronic elements to its established sound, the group temporarily removes some of its most recognisable characteristics and discovers that its personality remains intact without them.
That decision makes the transition into “Steel” considerably more effective because the physical weight of Cold Gawd suddenly returns. Thick guitars surround Wainwright's vocals, while the drums give the song a much more forceful presence and screams collide with melodic passages. The dynamics have as much in common with post-hardcore as they do with traditional shoegaze, and the guitars are used less to create a dreamy atmosphere than to generate pressure. The song deals with the sensation of confronting a mental obstacle that appears almost impossible to remove, and the arrangement translates that feeling into something remarkably physical. The music seems to push repeatedly against a surface that refuses to break.
It is on songs such as Steel that the description post-shoegaze becomes particularly useful for Cold Gawd. The band continues to use the blurred guitar textures, saturated production and obscured vocals associated with shoegaze, but reorganises those elements according to the much more confrontational dynamics of hardcore. Distortion therefore becomes more than an atmospheric effect because it can represent weight, anxiety and confinement, while quieter sections create enough space for the heavier passages to acquire genuine impact.
“Grease” develops this relationship between vulnerability and force around one of the EP's central themes: the necessity of continuing when the energy required to do so is disappearing. Its more restrained passages create a feeling of emotional fatigue before the guitars expand dramatically around the choruses. This produces one of the most interesting contradictions on Glory2, because the emotions being described frequently sound exhausted while the musicians performing them remain intensely alive. Instead of making fatigue sound passive, Cold Gawd turns it into momentum.
The atmosphere changes with “Bomb Pop,” which originally appeared in 2025 and provides one of the warmer moments on the record. Connected to a romantic memory, the song retains Cold Gawd's characteristic layers of guitar but uses them very differently. The distortion feels less aggressive and creates a diffuse warmth around the melody, allowing the song to exist almost like a memory whose edges have gradually softened with time. There are moments that recall the more melodic side of DIIV, but the emotional effect is particularly characteristic of Cold Gawd. Instead of using distortion to obscure a feeling, the band uses it to preserve one.
“Miracle” moves still further away from the group's heavier instincts and approaches atmospheric dream pop. The tempo slows, considerably more space appears between the instruments and the guitars cease to dominate the entire recording. Wainwright's voice seems suspended within the arrangement rather than fighting against it, and the song demonstrates how much Cold Gawd's understanding of intensity has developed. Earlier material frequently relied upon the expectation that restrained passages would eventually erupt into enormous guitars, whereas Miracle allows atmosphere itself to provide the emotional weight.
The closing “Glory” brings that restraint into an even more personal context. Wainwright wrote the song following the death of Sophie, his family's dog, shortly before Cold Gawd left for another tour. Rather than transforming that loss into an obvious emotional climax, the group approaches grief with considerable delicacy. The sadness remains present without becoming melodramatic, and the song captures the quieter reality of learning to carry an absence rather than expecting it to disappear.
This final track also provides an interesting measure of the distance Cold Gawd has travelled since God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here. On that record, enormous guitars often seemed to externalise whatever emotional pressure existed inside the songs. By the end of Glory2, the band no longer appears to believe that every difficult feeling requires a corresponding explosion of sound. Silence, repetition and restraint can now communicate just as much as distortion, which considerably expands the emotional possibilities available to the group.
That development has been accompanied by a more collective approach to making music. Although Matthew Wainwright remains Cold Gawd's principal creative figure, Brandon Aviles, Cameron Fonacier and Cameron “Duck” Burris have become more involved in the writing, performance and production, while Max Mercier handles a significant part of the production and mixing. The diversity of Glory2 may partly reflect that collaborative process because its six tracks are not attempting to reproduce exactly the same aesthetic.
This lack of uniformity is ultimately one of the EP's greatest strengths. Shoegaze remains deeply embedded in Cold Gawd's music, particularly in the treatment of guitars, vocals and saturation, but it now shares the space with electronic rhythms, hip-hop influences, post-hardcore dynamics, dream pop and the emotional sensitivity inherited from emo. The group does not appear particularly concerned with determining which of those elements should define it, and Glory2 is stronger because of that freedom.
With only six tracks, Glory2 naturally lacks the scale of I’ll Drown On This Earth, but it may ultimately provide more clues about where Cold Gawd could go next. The title track demonstrates that electronic production and hip-hop-informed rhythms can exist comfortably within their music, while Steel strengthens the relationship between shoegaze and post-hardcore. Grease transforms exhaustion into physical intensity, Bomb Pop uses distortion to preserve the warmth of a memory, Miracle explores a much lighter dream-pop atmosphere and Glory closes the record with a degree of restraint that would once have seemed unusual for the band.
This is why Glory2 feels more significant than a transitional EP released between two larger albums. Cold Gawd is not rejecting the sound that established its identity, nor is the band attempting to escape shoegaze simply because the genre has become increasingly crowded. Instead, it is learning that shoegaze can function as one component within a much broader musical language. Distortion can express aggression, exhaustion, affection or grief, while the guitars themselves can dominate a song, retreat into the background or disappear almost completely without Cold Gawd losing its identity.
Perhaps this is ultimately the most convincing definition of post-shoegaze in relation to Cold Gawd. It does not necessarily describe music that comes after shoegaze or attempts to replace it. It describes a band that has absorbed the genre deeply enough to use its vocabulary without feeling obliged to remain inside its boundaries.
With Glory2, Cold Gawd sounds increasingly comfortable with that freedom, and these six songs suggest that the most interesting part of the group's evolution may begin precisely where the traditional definition of shoegaze starts to fall apart.
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