God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here

On their 2022 sophomore album, the spirited American shoegazers Cold Gawd didn’t just speak bluntly with only the album title – the opening track is called “Sweet Jesus Wept Shit” – but demonstrated that the tension between aggro and pretty remains one of the approach’s best tools in the right hands. Keeping to eight songs in half an hour, the sextet whip up thick feedback and dreamy vocals, but also add in everything from black metal wails to, on the sharply observed “Comfort Thug,” a crisp comment on the genre’s overwhelming whiteness.