“Even the rats have left the city
We left you there we couldn’t take it anymore
No one to blame it on the outside
And all this fire is burning within me”
Berlin’s post-punk poets, Hello Pity, have unveiled a shadowy and sombre new single, “winter swelter.” This dark, brooding, and introspective track is set to be featured on their hotly anticipated debut album, slated for release later this year through Duchess Box Records.
Embodying the essence of post-punk, goth, and indie, this captivating quartet are known for their intoxicating fusion of genres and their penchant for chaotic live performances. Evoking The Damned, The Dead Kennedys, and Lords of The New Church, this melancholy number is dripping with punk rock pathos.
Albert Camus, a renowned French philosopher, and author, is best known for his novel, The Stranger, which inspired The Cure song “Killing An Arab”. However, the song “Winter Swelter,” with its despondently doldrum deathrock style, draws inspiration not from the pages of The Stranger but from a quote extended from Camus’s evocative essay, “Return to Tipasa.”
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
“I wanted to use that quote but in a reverse manner trying to think about what was the real coldness inside someone in the middle of a burning world full of challenges and what holds someone up when everything is crumbling around you.” frontman Colin explains.
Hello Pity’s track details the existentialist crisis of living in the dystopia of modern-day Berlin. It is a bleak tale of futility and a desire for meaning in a heartless environment. The video, created by the team of Dixie Kamaro, Daisy Rickman, Gaël Pettinaroli, and Max Bastian, is a glitched-out kaleidoscope of band footage and disjointed imagery, evoking the scrambled images of mindless channel surfing and half-memories.
Watch the video for ‘Winter Swelter” below:
Hello Pity, comprised of Colin (vocal, guitar), Gael, (vocal, guitar), Jonas (bass), and Max (drums), have been performing around Berlin; the band performed two shows at Synasthesie Festival before coming to the attention of Duchess Box Records.
“Winter Swelter” was recorded in Berlin and produced by local hero Leonard Kaage from the band Errorr in his studio Anomic Recordings, where the band have also been recording their album.
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