The Flatliners Drop a Chilling Communiqué
The punk rock stalwarts find meaning in friendship, survival, and the weight of everything around them on Cold World.
By Johnny Papan
Photo by Riley Taylor
- Published on
“I tend to gravitate towards those darker corners,” Cresswell says. “Writing about parts of human existence that frustrate me, anger me, confuse me. Stuff that isn’t fun and cute.”
The Flatliners’ latest album Cold World picks up where their last record New Ruin left off, expanding on the band’s growing sense of unease while digging deeper into how to cope with it. Where New Ruin captured an “oh shit” moment, Cold World sits in the aftermath.
The album cover features angelic statues submerged in an ocean. It’s a striking, symbolic image that mirrors the emotional weight of the record—stillness among impending doom. A metaphor for humanity’s sense of sinking below the surface. That same visual language carries into the video for “Good, You?” Even the lead single’s title feels tongue-in-cheek, a phrase commonly used when things are anything but good.
“They’re crumbling and decaying,” says Cresswell in reference to the statues in the video. “There’s something beautiful about that. And haunting. The image for the cover kinda just comes partly from the vastness of these emotions we’re talking about on this record.”
Cresswell stays informed about the world around him, even if it feels bleak. Writing about it has been a form of therapy for him, a way to sit with and express his emotions rather than avoid them. Without music as an outlet, he’d be a completely different person. But he does see a light at the end of the tunnel.
“This album is not meant to be this alarmist anthem kind of thing,” he says. “It’s about friendship in adversity, friendship at the end of the world.”
The original Flatliners lineup has been together for nearly 25 years, but the connection goes back even further. Cresswell met guitarist Scott Brigham in kindergarten and bassist Jon Darbey in the second grade. The band’s dynamic goes beyond creative chemistry—it’s rooted in real life, shaped by years of shared experience on and off the road, spending almost every waking moment together. Cresswell describes their relationship as “telekinetic.” It’s the kind of bond that doesn’t just define a band, it shapes how they survive in a fucked up world.
Cold World doesn’t try to clean up the chaos or offer easy answers. It sits in the chaos, unflinching, and looks for something real to hold onto. For The Flatliners, that’s always been each other. It’s not about finding an escape—it’s about being with the people who make it worth sticking around for.
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