ALBUM REVIEW: First Hate – Cotton Candy

Escho & Cascine

Released: 27.05.22

Arriving five years after their debut album A Prayer For The Unemployed, First Hate make a welcome return with Cotton Candy, with the Danish duo having evolved but – thankfully – not really grown up in the intervening years.

Anton Falck and Joakim Wei Bernild have retained their sense of absurdity and a taste for plaintive melodrama in their parallel world pop visions, but also found ways to bring their synth pop sound more up to date and to keep the baying hounds of formula at bay. The splintered acoustic guitar loops of the title track aren’t a million miles from Dean Blunt’s work on Black Metal 2, while Vampire Boi finds the band at their most lurid and playful. A delightful work of emotional hedonism.