Hold onto your pants, Midas Fall are back, sounding bigger and heavier than ever. The making of Cold Waves Divide Us is a tale of stalking Buddhist monks online, something called a Bottom Master, frightening audience members, and, um, misery prog. Colour us intrigued! We caught up with the trio to find out more.

Words: David West

Midas Fall: they’ll blow your knickers off!

Images: Stephen Alexander

“[Our music] is a hard thing to describe and misery prog, for those in the prog-know, is the best I can come up with.”

Rowan Burns

“I don’t think we went into it planning to make a heavier album,” says vocalist, producer, and multiinstrumentalist Elizabeth Heaton about Cold Waves Divide Us, the fifth album from Midas Fall. Since 2018’s Evaporate, the Scottish proggy post-rockers have expanded into a trio, with touring bassist Michael Hamilton joining Heaton and guitarist Rowan Burns. The sound may be heavier and more expansive than ever, but the writing process that produced their current record stretches back to Evaporate.

“There wasn’t really a gap in the writing. We carried on, it’s just taken a long time,” says Heaton. “I don’t write because I need to make an album. I write because it’s an emotional outlet. That’s been the case since album number one, and I think that will always be the case. That’s always how I’ve dealt with any issues in life: just put it into the music, then I can walk away from that and be happy. Just channel it all into the music.”