not quite like before
when you feel like there’s another fate in store
the stricter the rules the looser the cage
Chicago’s Panic Priest returns with a new album: Once Wild, released August 15th on Negative Gain Productions. It’s a record built on an architecture of darkwave, synthpop, and post-punk, with deliberate incursions into Italo disco, glam, and dream pop. The single Wait for Night exemplifies this approach, summoning a climate of tension and allure where the survival instinct collides with the intoxication of desire.
Lyrically, the song traces the arc of endurance and temptation. A voice urges the listener to “wait for night,” when constraints loosen and appetites overtake restraint. The refrain positions nocturnal experience as both danger and liberation, suggesting a dialectic in which the struggle of daylight yields to the intoxications of darkness. The track’s structure emphasizes repetition without monotony, pressing the urgency of its message with steady momentum.
Jack Armando, the artist behind Panic Priest, describes the visual counterpart as integral to the song’s force: “When director Devon Ford approached me about a Panic Priest video, I immediately knew the song had to be Wait for Night for its cinematic nature,” he explains. “I also wanted Chicago’s own analogue video art collective, Videowaste, to play a key role. Together we shaped a simple yet ambitious concept that captured the song’s themes: seduction, addiction, and the allure of nightlife – layered with stylish horror-movie inspiration. Ford, production designer Heather Kuhlmann, Videowaste, and the incredible crew went far beyond my expectations, creating something that blends analog glitch effects with a touch of digital magic. Everyone gave it their all, and I couldn’t be more happy with the results.”
The video itself extends the composition’s preoccupations. A solitary figure wanders through a room cluttered with televisions, each screen emitting signals of seduction—women presented in heightened, theatrical poses. Their presence provokes the central question: are these genuine encounters or mediated illusions, bait projected for the gaze of the observer? This interplay between material and illusion mirrors the song’s lyrical concerns, where wounds become pleasure and struggle converts into release.
Stylistically, Panic Priest maintains the melodic gravitation that has marked previous work while pressing further outward. The instrumentation folds in textures that suggest cinema as much as club culture, marrying analogue depth with synthetic sheen. It is here that the work assumes a political undertone: a reflection of a society addicted to spectacle, where gratification and discipline exist in constant tension. The song articulates not only the personal cycle of collapse and resurgence, but also the social one…a culture that thrives on commodified temptation, refracted through the glow of the screen.
Watch the video for “Wait for Night” below:
Panic Priest demonstrates a sustained capacity to build songs that are structurally firm yet sensually pliant with Once Wild. Wait for Night encapsulates the record’s dual logic: survival and surrender, spectacle and solitude, the endurance of the day and the allure of the night.
Listen to Wait For Night Below and order the album here.
Panic Priest is currently finishing their tour with Vision Video.
Live Dates:
- Sept 26, 2025 — State Street Pub, Indianapolis, Indiana
- Sept 27, 2025 — Eastside Bowl, Nashville, Tennessee
Follow Panic Priest:
Or via: