Cryogeyser

CRYOGEYSER

Cryogeyser - S/T - Bio
By Ivanna Baranova

Since their 2019 debut album Glitch, Los Angeles trio Cryogeyser have delivered a steady arc of distinctive melodies—both sonically mesmerizing and cathartic. Now, on their self-titled new album, the band has shifted their earlier vision of longing and resistance to one of metamorphosis, and cemented a spellbinding sound that realizes their transfigurative trajectory. 

Each song on Cryogeyser invites listeners to submit fully to landscapes that illuminate the viscerality of transformation. “This album is about heat,” singer/guitarist Shawn Marom explains. “Capturing ice and holding it forever—even as it melts—knowing you’re burning but staying in orbit.” Across the album’s sonic thresholds is a transfixing, heartfelt drive that celebrates the warmth that can emerge from new realizations. “Before music, I often felt like I took up too much space,” they reflect on Cryogeyser, which marks a deeply personal evolution. “This album is about transforming that shame into something shimmery and hopeful—playing like myself and no one else.” In immersive dedication to vulnerability, change, and the inevitable passage of time, the collection encapsulates the band’s journey and is a testament to Cryogeyser’s ethos: burning curiosity and fearless exploration of seemingly immutable grief.

The songs on Cryogeyser, written between 2019 to 2023, reflect years of breakdown, renewal, and lucid introspection. Marom’s lyrics transparently reveal the rawness of their experience, as in “Cupid,” where they play out the aftershocks where heartache meets acceptance, singing, “I’d rather sit in this new laughter.” Their songwriting—born from early pandemic voice memos—veers to limitless cascades of secrets, where freewriting and diary-like entries converge to capture granular and mythic detail. Marine landscapes, angels in doorways, smoking out the window while dreaming of castles all come together to form a surreal and ephemeral world showcasing symbols of change and wonder.

In single “Sorry,” Marom cuts straight to anti-apology (“Denying you of energy you deserved. I’m sorry. I would do it again, but I’d be lying”) with effortless, velvet candor, threading tones of honest devotion that unravel continually throughout the course of Cryogeyser. Even in ambivalence, the lyrics project declarative composure. In contrast to this plainspokenness, “Blue Light” reveals a flippant charm: “You are the blue light, shining like moonlight/I couldn’t find you/Now why should I have to?” Mixed by longtime friend Sonny Dipperi (julie, DIIV, Narrow Head) and mastered by Warren Defever (at Third Man Records in Detroit), Cryogeyser marks drummer Zach CapittiFenton’s production and engineering debut. The band logged countless hours refining the album’s sound, inspired by padding techniques from Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism—e.g., the reverse sounds on “Stargirl”—the huge rock guitars of Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream, and the pop elements of Frou Frou and Ivy. 

At the core of Cryogeyser is Marom’s haunting, airy vocal delivery. Their voice floats above the mix like a nearby memory, conveying both tender immediacy and detachment as they unpack complex terrains of love and loss. The emotionality and randomness that drive their creative process lead to lyrics that resonate far beyond the songs’ ends. In “Fortress,” Marom writes confessionally about finding clarity in connection, illuminating how surrender doesn’t necessarily yield acceptance. They open the song by declaring, “I long to wrap my arms around you/I want to know the truth/Even if it’s not exactly what I thought, I’m here for all of you,” pinpointing the dailiness of uncertainty, forfeiting expectation and composure. 

Standout “Stargirl” emblematizes the feeling of bargaining in grief, incanting a feeling of dislocation through refracted lines: “My body doesn’t feel like my own/I’m dying/I’m trying to make it back home.” The song watches Marom approach the unanswerable questions of what it means to matter to someone else, but not forever, dwelling on small moments and missed opportunities. “Stargirl” asks what the album answers: is the only way out of grief through it? Across all of the band’s albums is a resistance to pain; Cryogeyser, in contrast, is the processing of it. “Mountain,” featuring vocals from Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman, captures the essence of growth: “I hear one door closing holds another open.” Marom points to this song as a unique one for the band. “It’s about friendship, about having instead of longing. It’s a song about opening,” they explain. 

This departure from longing offers listeners the chance to experience lived change that’s been seen all the way through: Cryogeyser’s transfiguration. The album’s artwork–hand-drawn scissors opening into an antique silver butterfly manipulated by crude tools–reflects this, and carries the ornate and personal history of prior albums to a more immediate portrayal of transformation. Marom says: “I picture the album flowing from its core, experiencing a rise, a swell, and then an explosion—resulting in a blue-orange fantasy of icy magma; sludge that’s so cold it burns,” which is not far off from Webster’s definition of a cryogeyser. Cryogeyser, welcoming and full of devotion, offers an invitation to experience the grace of vulnerability and unforgettable portals of transformation.