Content warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual assault.
Dutch alt. pop troupe GGGOLDDD have unveiled the brooding new single Notes On How To Trust, which is the first song from their newly-announced fifth studio album This Shame Should Not Be Mine.
The single's music video is based on a concept by vocalist Milena Eva, following a young woman as she walks purposefully through the streets at night with a large backpack loaded with sinister contents - but we won't spoil it for you, as you can watch the video below.
Serving as the first new song from GGGOLDDD's upcoming fifth album, Notes On How To Trust is an introduction to the overarching themes that This Shame Should Not Be Mine tackles.
"The new album tells the story of my personal experience with sexual assault," Eva explains. "I was raped at the tender age of nineteen by someone I trusted and had fallen in love with and it shaped me a lot. I’ve ignored my trauma and everything that comes with that for many years. It was easier to pretend it had not happened at all, than to accept it. The song Notes On How To Trust is about learning how to trust again after such trauma, when every boundary is blurry and every person you meet is a possible risk it's a challenge staying sane. It’s about trusting others but mostly about trusting yourself."
Forced to stop and take stock during the pandemic, GGGOLDDD vocalist Milena Eva found herself confronting long-buried traumas and experiences that made the already emotionally turbulent times of lockdown near impossible.
Approached by Roadburn Festival to commission a GGGOLDDD performance for the 2021 online edition of the event, Eva channelled her experiences and emotions into a performance which became the most viewed and discussed set of the entire festival, fuelling her intent to address the topics head-on with new album This Shame Should Not Be Mine.
Returning to Jaime Gomez Arrelano's (Ghost, Grave Pleasures, Paradise Lost) Orgone Studio - the same studio they used for 2019's Why Aren't You Laughing? - the band set to the difficult task of translating Eva's experiences into a dark yet ultimately defiant statement, which is reflected in the album's artwork, and sees Eva portrayed in a pre-Raphaelite style tapestry, encased in armour as metaphor for the emotional armour she needed to survive her experiences.
"I've ignored my trauma for many years," Eva says. "It was easier to pretend it had not happened at all, than to accept it. In the silence of lockdown there was no escaping it. To relieve myself from all this I started writing this piece of music, together with Thomas and our fellow band members Igor, Jaka, Danielle and Vincent.
"The album is called This Shame Should Not Be Mine and it will make what has been invisible, visible. It will keep me company when I feel alone and it can bring comfort to others that carry a similar 'invisible' with them."
This Shame Should Not Be Mine is due for release on April 1 2022 via Artoffact Records, with both deluxe double-vinyl and double-CD editions of the record available to pre-order, including recordings of the band's 2021 Roadburn Festival performance as a bonus disc.
This Shame Should Not Be Mine Track Listing:
1. I Wish I Was a Wild Thing with a Simple Heart
2. Strawberry Supper
3. Like Magic
4. Spring
5. Invisible
6. I Won’t Let You Down
7. Notes on How to Trust
8. This Shame Should Not be Mine
9. On You
10. Beat by Beat
This Shame Should Not Be Mine is due for release on April 1 2022 via Artoffact Records.
Eva will curate Roadburn Festival 2022 alongside GGGOLDDD guitarist Thomas Sciarone
