On February 21st, 2025, Dashed to Shivers, a band that sounds like they were formed when four Romantic poets were cursed to wander the Münsterland countryside until they learned power chords, released Undertow, their second full-length album. It also marks the debut of their new frontman, Sebastian Kavermann, whose voice is less “lead singer” and more “plague doctor delivering an impassioned TED Talk on heartbreak.”
The album clocks in at 13 tracks, a number which, in true goth fashion, is not ominous by accident. The record is a genre-blending, incense-drenched labyrinth of emotional volatility and theatrical darkness, delivered with the kind of sincerity that would make most indie bands spontaneously combust from irony withdrawal.
Now, normally, when a band cites influence from Ghost, you prepare for disappointment. You expect a copy of a copy of Meliora with less charisma and more eyeliner. But Dashed to Shivers doesn’t merely pay homage. No. They commit ritual. Undertow isn’t influenced by Ghost — it stages a dramatic intervention. It drags them into a velvet-curtained room, locks the door, and says: “What if we took your cathedral rock, removed the smirk, and replaced it with actual spiritual dread?”
And reader, somehow… it works.
Kavermann doesn’t so much sing as he materializes, whispering liturgical angst in Latin-adjacent syllables like he’s just been excommunicated and is thriving because of it. Tracks like “Dry My Tears” are so emotionally raw they border on uncomfortably earnest — the kind of song that makes you stare out the window on a train you’re not even on. And yet, you don’t cringe. You light a candle. You open your third eye. You say thank you.
Then, just as you’re emotionally cradled in ambient synths and Gregorian sadness, the album punches you in the ribs with a riff that sounds like it was excavated from the basement of a condemned abbey. The shift in tone is so jarring and yet so perfect that you start to wonder if the real genre of this album is mood swings.
The duality is the point. Undertow thrives in its tension between delicacy and distortion, ritual and rebellion, incense and fire. “Forgotten Zone” and “Cobras in Fire”, both of which have been given the music video treatment, showcase the band’s ability to slam between styles like a possessed jukebox. One minute you’re in a slow-burning post-rock soundscape, the next you’re in a pit with leather-jacketed punks fighting to the rhythm of a demonic samba.
Where most bands pick a lane, Dashed to Shivers gleefully crashes through all of them in a hearse. And it’s a nice hearse. Velvet seats. Bone-shaped gear shift. Plays only Bauhaus and the Bloodborne soundtrack.
Let’s not ignore how absurd this all should be. A German alt-rock band earnestly invoking occult imagery, baroque melodies, and punk-adjacent breakdowns, fronted by a man who sings like he’s personally disappointed in God? It should collapse under its own melodrama. But instead, it ascends.
This isn’t a gimmick. It’s a concept executed with the deadly seriousness of a cult leader writing their first love song. And the result is cinematic, not in the Marvel sense, but in the “grainy Eastern European folk horror film that ends with a funeral dirge and an unsolved murder” kind of way. It’s the sound of a band not just unafraid to be dramatic, but furious that you’re not being dramatic enough.
In conclusion: Undertow is brooding, theatrical, and deeply, almost suspiciously effective. It’s music for people who read Edgar Allan Poe for the vibes and take notes. It’s the kind of album that convinces you to start dressing exclusively in shades of ash and wine. It makes you rethink your relationship with the word “dirge.”
And if nothing else, it proves one thing beyond all doubt: Dashed to Shivers is not your cousin’s basement band. They’re here, they’re unreasonably sad, and they’ve brought a choir, a candelabrum, and a surprisingly well-articulated worldview.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
