(Advance Copy) Cold In Berlin - Wounds

Dark Juan
2 days ago
5 min read

Released by: New Heavy Sounds

Release Date: 07.11.25

Running Time: 40:19

Score: Infinity/10

I have been consumed by the urge to write, this is the third review I have written today and it appears that the words are a torrent of things within my head which have been bursting to get out and unleash themselves on you, the unsuspecting people who just waited to read stuff about music, but instead are forced to endure the verbal diarrhoea spewing forth from the majorly twisted psyche of Dark Juan. I cannot help myself. I’d ask for help, but maybe this is some kind of bizarre catharsis that has been building for some time. Although I just went to check on the Sunday dinner I am cooking, and the fucking oven has gone out and has delayed the marvellous cuisine I am creating for at least an hour. What a bastard. In other news, I am surrounded by gentle farting and snoring as I deliberately wore out the Smellhounds this morning so they would leave me the fuck alone while I write this review about one of the greatest Gothic bands ever to come out of the UK – Ladies, gentlemen, and gentlepersons of all other genders and identities, this is London’s Cold In Berlin. My rabid enthusiasm and slavish devotion to Cold In Berlin’s music cannot be overstated, and neither can my deep and abiding love for the voice of Maya Berlin, a woman possessed of pipes so rarefied, Dark Juan’s spine is trembling just thinking about hearing the fifth release from Cold In Berlin, entitled “Wounds”.

The Platter of Splatter ™ has been released from confinement and has had “Wounds” placed upon it. It merely needs me to jab the correct control, and musical nirvana shall commence!

Oh.

Wait.

This is a bit shit, isn’t it?

Bugger.

Relax, I’m lying through my twisted green teeth! The record opens with single ‘Hangman’s Daughter’ and it’s like having my endorphin receptors squeezed dry in microseconds, such is my untrammelled joy at hearing new music from Cold In Berlin. Maya has lost none of her vocal bite, and the music, which encompasses robotic Krautrock, sensual Gothic Rock, punishing Metal, sepulchral Doom and pulsating Electronica hits every single pleasure centre in Dark Juan’s brain and already I am reduced to a dribbling, trembling mess on the floor, hands clamped over my headphones and shuddering with unrestricted pleasure. I’m sure if Dark Juan was put in an MRI scanner then medical professionals would be significantly concerned because his hypothalamus would be lit up like a fucking Christmas tree and this is only the first song. ’12 Crosses’ makes it even worse – a chorus so massive it would flatten London in mere moments hits right between the eyes and keeps on punching while Dark Juan simply takes it as much as he can, open mouthed, gasping for air and choking on the blood running into his mouth. ‘Messiah Crawling’ changes up the dynamic a little, being one of the more Metallic songs on the record, all snarling riffs, compulsive percussion and buzzing, insistent, Industrial bassline pulsating beneath the vocal, which is right on the edge of a histrionic burst of emotional overload.

The greatest asset this already fucking fantastic band has is the razor-sharp, piercing voice of Maya Berlin. Her voice is like having your veins opened by a stiletto wielded by the most beautiful woman you have ever seen. Lethal but utterly compelling and absolutely irresistible. Dangerous and cold, but with a cruelly sadistic, yet alluring aspect, like Siouxsie Sioux turned up to 11 and at her most psychotically seductive, she effortlessly carries the pathos and emotion of the music through her unique voice, and it is fair to say that Dark Juan is metaphorically piously salaaming at her feet, transfixed by every single word coming out of her mouth. Perhaps I should not let Mrs Dark Juan read this!

This is not to say the rest of the band are mere vehicles for the frontwoman, though. That would be absolutely incorrect. They are the engine, the body of the beast and without each other they would be merely interesting musicians, and not the comprehensively brilliant dark chest of wonders that Cold In Berlin are. The band are hugely more than the sum of their parts. Everything works in perfect synchronicity and every single flourish complements and enhances every other part of the music. I don’t have the words to describe just how much I am enjoying “Wounds”, without resorting to my usual nonsense about sex-wee alarms and the Calder Valley being flooded and making my own one-man pit in my lounge – however this humour feels massively out of place and a bit banal when I am in the presence of such puissant greatness, as I am right now. But the whole album is one of the most deeply SATISFYING musical experiences I have ever head. Cold In Berlin are the perfect band for Dark Juan, heavy enough to sate the desire for violence I carry everywhere with me, emotional enough to remind me that I am actually human and that others are not merely unimportant concentrations of atoms and a waste of flesh and oxygen, interesting enough to keep me engaged and bright-eyed and gasping for more and more and MORE and varied enough to excite me as I try to anticipate where the band are going to go next, and just… just… just the perfect band in the eyes of Dark Juan. They have everything that I enjoy encapsulated in their music. I am not usually compelled to display such abject hero-worship in a review, as I try to maintain a sense of detachment so I can listen without prejudice, as I am after all speaking to you about music you might be spending your hard-earned on, and I wouldn’t want to mislead you all, but my love for the music of Cold In Berlin is so overwhelming, so TOTAL, so powerful I just can’t help myself. I adore Cold In Berlin so much it makes me dreadfully unprofessional.

Can’t say fairer than that.

Everything about this album is perfect, genuinely. The production is meatier than a butcher’s window, the songs artfully arranged and played with passion and power and an utmost belief that is really quite scary to behold, and the whole band are absolutely at the top of their respective games, and this is one of the rarest of rare things, an album I am unable to criticise. Words are failing me even as I type and the superlatives I have at my command are burning out… just like the pleasure centres in my brain.

If someone was to ask me what band’s music best resembled Dark Juan as a person, Cold In Berlin would be it. I can say no more than that.

But I am going to. Cold In Berlin are utterly irreplaceable and one of the jewels in the crown of British music.

The Patented Dark Juan Blod Splat Rating System has lost the power of speech and syllabification. There is nothing left. “Wounds” has just finished playing and the sorrow is worse than if the world had ended. There is nothing left, except to score this album, which receives infinity/10.

TRACKLISTING:

Hangman’s Daughter

12 Crosses

Messiah Crawling

They Reign

The Stranger

We Fall

The Body

I Will Wait

Wicked Wounds

LINE-UP:

Adam Berlin – Guitar