It took five years for Cryogeyser to complete the follow-up to their full-length debut, Glitch, and much happened then. “I got an SG,” lead singer Shawn Marom dryly noted. “I leveled up.” They also shared that five is a significant number for the band’s self-titled follow-up. “Everything is in a stage of five: elements, the grief stages, caterpillar metamorphosis, it took five years to complete the record, and we have released five singles ahead of the release.”
As anyone who has listened to any of those advance release songs could imagine, Cryogeyer is a song cycle as catharsis, a way to work through a breakup. In the press release, Marom describes the record as trying to capture the feeling of burning but staying in orbit, of celebrating the warmth that comes from new realizations. “The band became a way to communicate with an ex of mine who was far away. It was a way to say, ‘Can you even hear me?’ A mode of communication, a type of time traveling,” Marom said. “The record is self-titled because it spans a lot of time, but makes up one moment.”
Marom reflected on how it feels now that the album is completed and it’s time for it to meet the public. “I try so hard in art and life to make sure I’m understood, sometimes to my own detriment. It is also important to me that I’m understanding something about myself. The only constant in that time was that I didn’t quit the band. I decided to give it five years. Well, it’s been five years, and it’s working. This is something I worked really hard on and people are listening. But, I do think more about if I mean this before I put it out in eternity,” Marom laughed.
Marom is considering how these profoundly personal songs will land with longtime and new fans. “I was able to refine and keep the listener in mind. I write all my songs starting with the vocal melody and then what will serve the emotion of what I’m saying. I need that, or it doesn’t make sense to me. With the first record, I was so grief-ridden that the person I wrote about wasn’t hearing the songs. I used to finish a show and have to walk away and be alone. This time, I wanted the processing of my pain to be more private. I was just spewing it out in the earlier records,” they said.
One element of Cryogeyer‘s songs that sets them apart is that Marom is adept at taking the literal details of her life and fusing them with more fantastical elements in her lyrics. “Stargirl” (one of the singles, with a Lance Bangs-directed video) is also the name of a place they lived with an ex. “It is gone now, but I really was smoking out the window, like the line in the song,” they noted.
“I am a fantasy addict. I try to live my life in a magical way. This album deals with alchemy and trying to figure out the meaning of things. Things that are timeless are simple, but they still need some metaphor. Nobody cares about a sentence that is ‘I feel like this when.’ The imagery is a way for me to communicate private things in a secret way.”
While the songs on Cryogeyser were crafted in a time of transition and grieving, the songs that emerged are a tribute to weathering storms and finding the right collaborators. Drummer Zach Capitti Fenton (who also produced the record) and bassist Samson Klitsner are the fit Marom sought, and their chemistry is apparent from the first listen. This is Cryogeyer’s best collection of songs to date. Marom’s vocals have a more pronounced vulnerability and power. Capitti Fenton’s production gives the songs an appropriate fullness, and you can hear the influences of groups like Smashing Pumpkins and Death Cab for Cutie.
“The title is also a way to celebrate the band. I went through some bandmates, but when Zach joined and Samson joined, I felt like this is my band. It feels good to put out with an insistence that it couldn’t be elevated without this configuration of the band. Anyone writing lonely-ass songs like me wants community,” they laughed.
“Samson was a fan of the band and played with other bands I knew. When I was trying to work on the record, Zach came in to play and was a perfect fit. I have known Zach for years. He is incredibly talented. Both of them are good at holding space for the emotional element of my creative process,” Marom said.
Another key collaborator this time is His Name Is Alive‘s Warren Defever, who mixed Cryogeyser at Third Man Records in Detroit. Marom was a longtime fan with a personal connection to Defever’s work. “Warren was introduced to me through the person who many of these [Cryogeyser‘s] songs are about. His Name is Alive was his favorite band. I met Warren in 2019 when His Name Is Alive played a show in Los Angeles, I went up to him to ask if he had the Mouth by Mouth CD. I shared our music with him. Later, he messaged me and said, ‘Your band is actually good.’ He is such a pro,” Marom said.
Cryogeyser are now on the road supporting the LP, and Marom is happy to be out and away from the studio. “Not touring last year has sucked. I hate recording and I love playing live. The uncertainty of playing live is something I love,” they said. “Only artists have a snapshot of themselves. I have a literal review of four years of my life through this record. I can do whatever I want after this statement. Whatever I’m feeling now will be so different in a year. Now I can move on without expectations about what the next record will be.”
They continued, “I don’t think I healed the wound but changed without realizing it. That’s the metamorphosis. You’re not aware that you’re changing. The shape is different, unbeknownst to me. I have to listen to the album to figure that out. I was trying to honor the past. You can’t change it, but you can honor it,” they said. “I never believe anyone who says, ‘I don’t listen to the lyrics.’ Yes, you do. You listen when it touches you.”