When Punk exploded in 1977, the dam burst so hard it left a crater. It didn’t take very long for the maelstrom of no-frills sonic intensity to suck up other elements. Post-punk emerged almost immediately, deconstructing punk into unrecognizable shapes. Post-punk in turn splintered into its own series of subgenres—most notably, new wave and gothic rock.
Genre taxonomy is an inexact science, and no one is totally sure who laid goth rock’s first brick. But Bauhaus is a darn good guess.
If it accomplished nothing else, God, Get Me the F*** Out of Here proved that shoegaze and hip hop aren’t entirely without overlap. Cold Gawd plugged their reverb pedals into their fuzz boxes and played with the spirit of hip hop. Only two years later, the SoCal outfit is back with a record that turns that concept up to eleven.
But I’ll Drown on This Earth borrows more than just aesthetic and mood. The vocals are often run through the same sort of autotune as Rihanna or T-Pain. Grooves are beefier and boomier. The skits are even more pronounced. And all this while also becoming more experimental and ambient.