Coma Cinema, the band behind the 2011 emo classic, Blue Suicide, is ending their hiatus and releasing a new album in 2024. Coma Cinema is a musical project by Mathew Cothrane who, after retiring Coma Cinema in 2017, has continued to release music with other bands and projects such as Elvis Depressedly and The Goin’ Nowheres.

The upcoming album is titled, GRAND DELUSION, and is expected to be released by the end of 2024. In an interview with The Needle Drop, Cothran states that the album is inspired by an obsession with reading biographies, “I’ve got three or four songs that I wrote just from reading biographies of people I found extremely interesting…delusional thinking is definitely a big part of it.”

The album will consist of 12 songs that center on “finding humor in despair.” The album was recorded in Cothran’s home studio and will be self-released. An upcoming single, “Thomas Kinkade’s Grand Delusion,” and an accompanying music video are scheduled to be released in a few weeks. 

Cothran found his biggest success with his 2011 Coma Cinema album, Blue Suicide, which has become a staple in the underground emo genre. The album was well received upon release by Pitchfork and Anthony Fantano who both gave it a 7 out of 10, and the album has since garnered a cult following.    

Cothran retired Coma Cinema in 2017 because he felt that the project had “said what it needed to say,” but after noticing a revival in interest from fans online, he felt inspired to return to the project, “after I ended Elvis Depressedly I started to notice [Coma Cinema] was getting a new life to it. A lot of that stuff I wrote when I was in my early twenties so I can see it being relatable to a younger audience.” 

Cothran stated, “For a long time, the last Coma Cinema record, Lost Memory, was my favorite thing that I had done, but I feel like these new songs are definitely as good as those songs and will continue the trajectory of that band.” 

While there is no tour planned, Cothran plans to perform a few shows to celebrate the record, “I’m doing a show in Knoxville, which will be the first Coma Cinema show in years, but every couple of months I’ll try and do another show….I’m probably never going to do months and months of touring again, that’s a young person’s game and I’ve got cats and stuff, I don’t want to leave.” 

Despite not going on tour, Cothran is thankful for the community of fans that have launched the group's resurgence, “I’m really thankful that people made Coma Cinema a thing with such a long life span that continues to reach people. I was inspired by the people that still listen [to Coma Cinema] to make more. There’s a lot of value in making art that isn’t meant to be shared, but once something is shared, it kind of becomes a collective project."