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Jul 15, 2020 Cults By Christopher Roberts Photography by Maxwell Kamins

Cults (the duo of Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion) have announced a new album, Host, and shared a new song from it, album opener “Trials,” via a video for it. Host is due out September 18 via Sinderlyn and features “Spit You Out,” a new song Cults shared in June, also via a video (it was one of our Songs of the Week). Check out the “Trials” video below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art.

In a press release Cults collectively had this to say about the new song: “‘Trials’ focuses on the power that addictions and harmful ideologies have to transform. The chorus walks a tightrope between a metaphor for gaslighting and a despairing worry about the person you still hold out hope for.”

Jeff Strikers, who directed the “Trials” video, had this to say: “Cults asked me back in April if I had any ideas for a music video we could make while quarantined across the country. Via Zoom, we shot Madeline’s performance against a green tablecloth from a party store. I started experimenting with an old optical illusion called ‘Pepper’s Ghost,’ projecting Madeline’s image onto a sheet of glass to create a ghostly, hologram effect. They use this technique on the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. It was pretty magical and the whole process was constant discovery and surprise. An ideal creative experience.”

Cults co-produced the Host with Shane Stoneback and it was mixed by John Congleton and mastered by Heba Kadry. Loren Shane Humphrey (The Last Shadow Puppets, Florence and the Machine, Guards) plays drums on the album.

The album finds Follin exerting a bit more creative control than before and taking a larger role in the songwriting.

“In the past, I’d never brought my own music to the table because I was just too shy,” Follin says in a press release.

“When Shane and I heard what Madeline had written, we couldn’t believe it,” says Oblivion. “The music just floored us.”

The band’s last regular studio album was 2017’s Offering. Although in 2018 Cults also released another album where they covered The Motels’ classic 1979 debut album Motels in its entirety as part of Turntable Kitchen’s Sounds Delicious Series.

Read our 2017 interview with Cults on Offering.

Host Tracklist:

1.Trials
2. 8th Avenue
3. Spit You Out
4. A Low
5. No Risk
6. Working It Over
7. A Purgatory
8. Like I Do
9. Masquerading
10. Honest Love
11. Shoulders To My Feet
12. Monolithic

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