Bury me alive
Watch my flesh decay
I am the waking dead
I live it every day
Some mornings, getting out of bed requires a small act of impersonation. You face the mirror, arrange an expression, and prepare to pass among people who seem comfortably at home in their own bodies. Meanwhile, the distance between your appearance and your experience keeps growing. There is a particular loneliness in wondering whether anyone can see how badly you are struggling, especially when some part of you hopes they will. Gothic fiction has long given that estrangement a body: the creature who walks, speaks, and wears a recognizably human face while feeling separated from the living.
Washington, D.C.’s Amulet gives depression and fear a vampiric presence in I am the Dark, the first single from their forthcoming third studio album, The Dark. Produced by Christopher Hall of Stabbing Westward and released through Dist0rtion Productions, the song begins a six-single campaign.
An organ melody opens the proceedings with suitable gothic ceremony before the kick drum and a deep, insistent bassline set the body moving. That low-end momentum recalls The Sisters of Mercy, carrying the track beneath thick gothic rock guitars and sharply defined hooks. Stephanie Stryker sings with considerable authority, her delivery seductive and assertive, with a strain of hurt beneath its polished surface. The guitars bear down around her while the organ supplies a funereal flourish; the chorus lets her stretch each phrase into a forceful declaration.
The lyrics make the distance between that commanding voice and its subject especially affecting. A glance in the mirror becomes an anxious inspection: “Can they tell that I’m in hell?” Later, the smile itself becomes suspect, a socially acceptable expression concealing an experience almost impossible to communicate. Images of burial, bodily decay, and waking death give physical form to the exhaustion of continuing through ordinary days. By the repeated title, the distinction between suffering and self has begun to collapse. The darkness has become an identity, spoken aloud with enough conviction to make the admission unsettling.
The video places Amulet in a stark studio setting, its cool, nearly monochrome palette broken by pale horizontal streaks of light. Crowned and corseted, with long gloves and an extravagant black collar, Stryker holds the center as the edit cuts between the full band and close views of her face. Her gestures are expansive, her stare direct; the performance gives the song’s private distress a formidable public bearing. Brief analog-style distortion roughens the opening images, while the restrained setting leaves every glance, guitar movement, and strike of the drums exposed.
Filmed by Illumination Media at Crescendo Studios, the clip was edited and styled by Stryker. Custom garments come from Angel’s House of Design Co., with her choker supplied by Cult of Asmodeus.
Watch the video for I am the Dark below:
Led by Stryker and principal songwriter and multi-instrumentalist MJ Phoenix, Amulet bring together gothic rock, darkwave, and industrial electronics. Their live lineup includes guitarist Bob Carr and drummer Billy Holler, both appearing in the video. Following 2024’s Katharsis and the 2025 remix EP Purification, The Dark develops their interest in the supernatural as a language for emotional experience. The album arrives on April 30, 2027, through Dist0rtion Productions, on digital, CD, and vinyl formats.
A further transformation follows with I am the Dark (Stabbing Westward Remix), recasting the original’s gothic rock instrumentation through driving industrial beats and expansive synthesizers. Bandcamp pre-orders open on Friday, November 6, 2026, ahead of its full release across streaming platforms on Friday, November 13, 2026, through Dist0rtion Productions.
Listen to I am the Dark below, and order the single here.
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