The weight of the world heavy on your shoulders
We pretend that it will be alright, it will be alright
Somewhere between the damp streets of Washington State and a rehearsal room vibrating with bad intentions, Licorice Chamber steps forward carrying new weight…and they don’t pretend that burden is anywhere near comfortable. The darkwave / goth rock quartet, fronted by Layla Reyna, unveils their new video single, Heavy, alongside presales for the forthcoming Remnants EP and tour dates with The Palace of Tears. It lands like a sealed envelope slid across a bar table at last call.
This is the first transmission since drummer Cory Sorrentino wrestled control away from the drum machine, and the shift is immediate. The band’s live dynamic, hardened through repetition, rehearsal, and roughly thirty shared stages, now breathes with a physical insistence. Bass and guitar lock in closer, tension tightening at the seams, while the percussion presses forward with a steadier spine. Marc Jones and Joe Fox jokingly dub the direction “Doom Wave,” a nod to Sorrentino’s metal roots, but the joke lands because the result is serious business: thicker structures, heavier footing, and a sense that the floor could give way at any moment.
At the center stands Reyna, delivering a song built on accumulation. “Heavy centers on the psychological and emotional weight we carry,” she says. “It explores how unspoken guilt, memory, trauma, and self-condemnation accumulate over time, reshaping a person until they’re no longer who they once were. It’s about endurance, and carrying something for so long that it becomes part of your posture, your breath, your silence.”
The track moves with restraint, pressure building quietly, drawing on the lineage of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Florence and the Machine, Faith and the Muse, Mephisto Waltz, and X-Mal Deutschland, filtered through darkwave synths and goth-pop excess. Everything feels held: shoulders squared, jaw clenched.
Reyna’s self-directed video, a psychedelic montage of floating and superimposed visions and colours, mirrors that internal compression. The imagery resists easy explanation, leaning instead on repetition, enclosure, and controlled movement, allowing sensation to do the talking.
“Rather than literal storytelling, the video uses symbolism and sensation to show the tension between appearing composed and being internally fractured,” says Reyna. “I wanted the visuals to rely on repetition, obscured identity, and constrained space, in order to mirror the internal experience of carrying something for too long. The moments of motion during the chorus are brief shifts in pressure that never fully resolve, and are used to create a space where the weight is felt instead of explained. The fabric represents accumulated weight made visible, and a stand-in for emotional weight, that clings, constrains, and never fully lets go. This reinforces the central idea of ‘Heavy’: the weight doesn’t disappear; it settles and becomes part of how you move through the world. Both the song and its visuals sit in restraint, tension, and endurance.”
Watch below:
Heavy feels like a reckoning conducted under fluorescent lights: no theatrics, no escape hatch. Licorice Chamber sound settled into this configuration, dangerous in their discipline, and newly comfortable carrying the load. Remnants is due February 24th, 2026, in both CD and digital download formats.
Licorice Chamber are about to embark on a tour of the US West Coast in support of the new EP, joined for selected dates by The Palace of Tears.
Remant’s is out February 24, 2026.
Licorice Chamber – Live: US West Coast, Feb-May 2026
- Feb 7th Olympia, WA at McCoys
- Feb 14th Seattle, WA at Belltown Yacht Club
- Feb 26th Eugene, OR at John Henrys
- Feb 27th Eureka, CA at The Siren Song + The Palace of Tears
- March 1st San Francisco, CA at Hotel Utah + The Palace of Tears
- March 27th Yakima, WA at The Chainsaw Cat + The Palace of Tears
- March 28th Richland, WA at Rays Golden Lion + The Palace of Tears
- April 18th Olympia, WA at Cryptatropa
- May 2nd Seattle, WA at Central Saloon for Mayday Misery Deathrock Festival
- May 30th Tacoma, WA at Real Art Tacoma for World Goth Day: Year Four
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