Seven albums into their career, The Flatliners know how to make bleakness sound irresistible. Cold World is filled with people searching for somewhere to belong while everything burns around them, but this never feels like a record prepared to surrender. Instead, the Canadian quartet meet uncertainty with massive hooks, bruised melodies and the sort of collective defiance that suggests that if everything must fall apart, they are going down together.
“Stolen Valour” opens with the feel of US heartland rock, recalling Hot Water Music at their most anthemic. “Together in disintegration,” sings Chris Cresswell before asking, “Where do I belong?” It establishes the album’s central contradiction: these songs sound enormous even as everything within them appears to be collapsing. There is always darkness here, and “Good, You?” confronts it directly. “The family business poisoned you,” Cresswell observes, but the communal vocals make The Flatliners sound like a gang determined to face it together.
There is a harsher edge to the verses of “Inner Peace”, although underneath its aggression is a band still searching for something better. “And They’re Off” does not even attempt to disguise its sadness, yet The Flatliners never sound like they can be broken. That resilience rings out most clearly through its superb solo.
The sweet harmonies and uplifting music of “Only Darkness” contrast starkly with its words, while “Whyte Light” chugs forward as it watches everything burn. Whatever the subject matter, the hooks throughout Cold World are quite superb.
“Into Annihilation” is slower and perhaps more considered—the sort of song Uncut might have enthusiastically covered in 1998—but its proclamation of “I’m your ending” ensures it remains anything but comfortable. The bass and double-tracked vocals give “Pulpit” a different texture, finding something approaching beauty in the way everything has decayed.
“Turning Signal Rhythm” is always interesting and compelling, twisting and turning instead of settling into anything predictable. “Gush”, meanwhile, lays bare what the band describe as the fragility of life.
There is real passion in “Burn” as it attempts to “smash the silence”, before “United In Spite” closes the record with the words “sit in comfortable silence”. Yet there has been nothing remotely comfortable about Cold World. This is an album filled with grief, anger and uncertainty, but also one that clings fiercely to solidarity. The future might be bleak, but The Flatliners are facing it together.
Rating: 8/10
