As befitting their moniker, Night Sins make music that could easily and equally serve as the perfect soundtrack to a very good night out or a very bad night out depending on how and when the drugs kick in and by “drugs” I mean “hugs” of course (stay off the drugs, fool!) and if you’re a sucker like I am for highly-emotive-yet-emotionally-distant death disco that makes you wanna dance into the abyss and to never, never ever come back down again (as Jarvis Cocker once opined “at four o’clock [in the morning] the normal world seems very, very, very far away”) then you should take a listen to their new single “Kill Like I Do” (Born Losers), a euphoric eulogy that puts across this vibe to the extreme.
Night Sins is a project helmed by Kyle Kimball and “Kill Like I Do” is the second advance single off their upcoming fifth album Violet Age due out this summer, a single that proves you can teach an old goth band new tricks with Kimball honing his “Sisters Of Xymox meets Clan Of Mercy as fronted by Dave ‘Marty Gore’ Gahan” aesthetic and pushing it into new territory while still hitting all the sweet spots—like the driving gated-reverb drumbeat and menacing synth-bass hook, the serpentine guitar line that doesn’t skimp on the shuddering flange or the dirty distortion, and the infectious little sing-songy toy keyboard melody similar to those featured in an least half of the Cure’s song intros and some New Order ones too.
And all this before the vocals even kick in (come inside and burn this all down / spread my ashes on the ground) vocals alternating between a creepily seductive stage whisper (a crucial vocal technique for any self-respecting dark wave singer!) and a double-tracked Peter Murphy-esque baritone that sounds like Bela Lugosi’s not feeling at all well. And you may ask yourself, "Where did such a potent doomy-yet-danceable fatalism originate from?” Well, according to Night Sins’ official bio, the project emerged “around 2010 under the oppressive skies of Philadelphia…fitly connected to a city engrossed in shadow-soaked vices and dilapidated architecture” which makes me think “hmm is Philly actually the North American version of Manchester?” and I’m willing to believe it. So look out for Grand Theft Auto VI: The City of Brotherly Vehicular Manslaughter coming soon.
And when it comes to “shadow-soaked vices” Mr. Kimball has described “Kill Like I Do” as being a “metaphor for having zero self control…about not being able to stop until you’ve hit the floor” and hey I don’t wanna make too many assumptions here but it’s my guess that in his other life pounding the skins for the Philly-based shoegaze mainstay Nothing for over a decade must have taught Kyle a thing or two about this type of subject matter. Just take a gander at Nothing’s Wikipedia page or Spotify bio etc. after which you’ll likely come away saying “here is a band that has seen, and somehow survived, some seriously f*cked up dark times” which fortunately-for-us-all Nothing’s frontman Domenic "Nicky" is expert at trans-mutating into eviscerating, ethereal art…
…which Night Sins does too, but in their own form and fashion, shining an icy cold cold-wavey neon light into the darkness that, far from obliterating the gathering gloom, instead makes it sound newly romantic. (Jason Lee)