Won’t succumb to hate
Nothing to embrace
My life’s nothing but a maze
Reaching for that place
On a small, blue world suspended in a vast and indifferent cosmos—what Carl Sagan once described as a pale blue dot—the ice walls retreat like forgotten memories, and the air carries the exhaust of our ambition. We drill into ancient stone as if the planet were inert, not alive with consequence. Tornadoes arise where balance once lived, signatures of a system pushed past its limits. This is both an environmental failure and a moral one: politics severed from responsibility, progress confused with extraction. We are children of the Earth, yet act as careless stewards, mistaking dominance for wisdom. The tragedy is not inevitable; it is chosen, repeated, and accelerating toward silence.
With this environmental warning in mind, Crying Vessel returns with Bringing Down The Nation 2.0, a song steeped in aftermath rather than uprising. It feels like a communiqué sent after the fires, once slogans have collapsed into ash and the future has narrowed to consequence. Political in pulse and planetary in scale, the track studies humanity’s fixation on its own unraveling, delivered with alarming gravitas.
The original version of the song is sung by Slade Templeton, but this version—softer and more synth-based—offers a haunting female perspective from the band’s enigmatic new guitarist, Larry. The music moves with controlled force. Percussion lands like measured blows, patient yet punishing, while low-end currents pull everything toward a common weight. Guitars and synths circle one another, metallic and mournful, pressing forward without excess. Slade Templeton’s voice arrives steady, worn, resolute; less a call to arms than a record of survival, carrying conviction without sermon.
Taken from Sepulchers – The Maiden, released via Cold Transmission Music, the accompanying self-directed video sharpens the intent. Collapsing ice walls, drilling rigs, choking skies, and spiraling storms unfold as evidence rather than illustration. Seen from afar, these gestures of ruin would be barely perceptible—tiny scars on a pale blue dot—but here they are rendered unavoidable. Industry advances. Nature recoils. The tension is political and emotional at once, a portrait of stewardship abandoned in favor of extraction. There is no villain singled out, only a shared failure rendered at planetary scale.
Watch the video for “Bringing Down The Nation 2.0” below:
Since 2011, Crying Vessel have occupied a vital position within goth and post-punk’s contemporary current, folding historical aesthetics into present-day urgency. With a catalogue now spanning seven albums, including the dual release Sepulchers – The Maiden and Sepulchers – The Servant, their evolution has been intentionally built through persistence rather than reinvention.
Sepulchers – The Maiden pushes Crying Vessel deeper into their own gravity, where the music grows heavier, slower, and more inward-facing without turning ornamental. Melodies carry weight rather than comfort, arrangements press close, and emotion is conveyed through restraint instead of release. It feels like an excavation—careful, deliberate—drawing out the band’s gothic and post-punk lineage until only the most essential elements remain, stark and unprotected.
Bringing Down The Nation 2.0 stands as a stark document of collapse observed up close. It listens to the planet, registers the damage, and answers with clarity. From a distance—on that pale blue dot adrift in silence—every justification shrinks, every consequence sharpens. Awareness still matters, even as the ground continues to give way. As Carl Sagan reminded us, for all our ambition and division, this pale blue dot remains—at least for now—the only home we have.
Listen to Bringing Down The Nation 2.0 below and order the single here.
Bringing Down The Nation 2.0 by Crying Vessel
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The post Crying Vessel Confronts the Consequences of Environmental Collapse in Video for “Bringing Down The Nation 2.0” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.