Californian dark rockers Rival Cults reemerge with new single »Dripping With Divinity«; available now on all major streaming platforms!

Santa Barbara, California based dark rockers Rival Cults premiere new single and music video »Dripping With Divinity«, released on November 14th, 2025 via Dune Altar.

Listen to »Dripping With Divinity« on all major streaming platforms!

Courtesy of Dune Altar:

“One listen to their phenomenal debut, and you’ll quickly become indoctrinated to their style.” – New Noise Magazine

“A fantastic album which can appeal to so many, like a current look back at the past with one eye eagerly trained on the horizon.” – Mick Mercer

Friday, November 14th – Santa Barbara dark-rockers Rival Cults unleash »Dripping With Divinity«, their first new music since their acclaimed 2023 debut album »Indoctrination« (Dune Altar). Fresh off a run of western tour dates that further hardened their already muscular sound, the band return with a baritone-driven, riff-charged hymn to oblivion and eternity, and the first page of the band’s next chapter.

Ominous and triumphant in equal measure, »Dripping With Divinity« channels the band’s live-forged fire into something both ecstatic and ceremonial. The track revels in the collision of death, desire, and transcendence, a ritual invocation carried by vocalist Cole Barrington’s commanding baritone and the band’s signature dual-guitar-driven power. The performance feels sharpened by time and touring: tighter, heavier, and more intent on capturing the hedonistic charge at the heart of their sound.

Photo by Simona Del Occulto / Mountains Afire

Lyrically, the song dives into themes of surrender, transformation, and the allure of the unknown. Images of liquid sky, sacred blood, and eternal bliss echo Rival Cults’ instinct for turning darkness into propulsion, and their vision of gothic rock as both celebration and ritual.

“The band is once again great at pairing a looming, gothic atmosphere with a surge of triumphant energy” – Destroy//Exist

The accompanying music video amplifies the song’s ritualistic edge, cutting between kaleidoscopic soundstage performance shots and a torrent of vintage scenes pulled from American religious extremism: revival-tent frenzies, lakeside baptisms, snake-wielding prophets, and wild-eyed evangelists. The juxtaposition casts »Dripping With Divinity« as both ecstatic and unsettling, linking the music to decades of spiritual spectacle and hysteria.

»Dripping With Divinity« stands as a bold return for the band, hinting at what’s ahead and cordially inviting listeners to sign over their belongings and join the cult.

»Dripping With Divinity« is available on all streaming platforms now! Stream HERE.

More on Rival Cults:

Santa Barbara’s Rival Cults thrive at the crossroads of death, desire, and rock & roll swagger, channeling a strain of gothic rock that’s as riff-driven as it is shadow-soaked. Formed in 2020 by longtime friends Adi Tejada (Uphill Battle, Sutratma), Casey Shropshire (Uphill Battle, ex-Sutratma), and vocalist Cole Barrington, the band took shape quickly, with a creative spark that ignited as soon as Barrington heard the first demos and began writing lyrics. They later rounded out the lineup with bassist Cabe Fletcher (Embassy) and drummer Richard Rhiger, solidifying a lineup built on longtime camaraderie and decades of underground experience.

The core of Rival Cults’ identity was forged through Barrington’s own personal reckoning. After years spent in metal bands and a lifelong relationship with dark music (including a childhood cameo in his uncle Andrew Fleming’s The Craft), he hit bottom with alcohol in late 2020. That struggle, and the rebirth that followed, shaped the emotional spine of the band’s early material. Their self-titled EP arrived in 2021, carrying the urgency of a group clawing its way toward something new.

In 2023 they released their debut full-length »Indoctrination« on Dune Altar, a record that chronicled Barrington’s journey out of addiction and into a sharpened sense of purpose. With baritone vocals that recall Sisters Of Mercy’s most impassioned moments and a dual-guitar attack that draws from The Cult’s towering dark-rock lineage, Rival Cults have carved out a sound that reclaims the “rock” in gothic rock: headlong, impassioned, and unmistakably their own.

Music by Casey Shropshire.
Lyrics by Cole Barrington.
Engineered & mixed by Adi Tejada.
Drums recorded by Armand John Anthony at Captains Quarters.
Mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege.
Music video shot by Simona Del Occulto, edited by Cole Barrington.

Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well