Are we dreaming?
My dear friend
Is this the beginning?
Or is the end?
From the smoke-choked basements of New Jersey’s hardcore scene to the flickering strobes of New York’s underground, BLXCKFLAMINGO moves like a storm rolling in from distant shores: dark yet defiant, brooding yet unbowed. Their music howls, aches, and churns through the air like negatively charged ions in a haunted house, stitched together from restless obsessions and a hunger to build something bigger than the sum of its influences.
For Kevin, the journey began in the backseat of his childhood, where The Beatles, Hall & Oates, and Gipsy Kings played through static-filled car speakers. Those songs led him toward the ethereal depths of The Smashing Pumpkins, Placebo, and Drab Majesty, seeking sound as sanctuary. Roberto, by fate or accident, was born into rock and roll; his mother carrying him through a Rolling Stones concert before he ever took his first breath. He grew up surrounded by classic rock, synthpop, and hip-hop, fascinated by the way music moved people.
Now, BLXCKFLAMINGO creates music forged in the tension between escape and confrontation, longing and rebellion, nostalgia and the unknown. Their latest self-titled EP hosts three powerful tracks.
Brujería seethes with the fever of obsession, where love and ruin tangle like flames licking at a funeral pyre. Fire rages, desire smolders, and devotion warps into something ritualistic, an offering too intoxicating to resist. Passion and pain are not separate, but fused, forged in the same relentless heat. The ocean beckons like a baptism, rain falls like an absolution, but no cleansing comes…only the slow, sweet suffocation of submission.
This is love as a curse, seduction laced with poison, a romance so lethal it devours. The woman in question isn’t merely adored; she commands, conjures, compels. Her presence is witchcraft, her touch a spell that binds. The band underscores this fatal longing with a visualizer from Dracula, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee locked in an eternal battle; a fitting parallel for love so consuming, so cruelly divine, that to embrace it is to be utterly undone.
Your World My War clashes intimacy against inevitability, a battle hymn for those standing at the edge, watching the world teeter toward ruin. Fear is swallowed, solitude dismissed…what’s left is claimed, carried forward, salvaged from the wreckage. Light flickers, darkness looms, but neither triumphs. Destruction and renewal dance in the dim glow of an uncertain dawn. The final refrain leaves a question left unanswered: is this the first breath of something new, or the last gasp before oblivion? The song surges forward, a reckoning with fate, a refusal to fall silent. It is not a surrender, but a storm barreling toward the future, determined to endure, to outlast, to build something from the ruin—whether it’s a beginning or the bitter end.
Good Morning Death, My Darling slithers through the sickened mind of a predator, a soul already lost, trapped in its own poetry of pursuit. The lyrics curl like smoke around the inevitable, the irreversible, the final flicker before the fall. This is a confession without regret, a hymn to the hunt. The killer watches, waits, whispers his own requiem. We are given a keyhole glimpse into his unraveling; a fevered monologue where life’s fragility is both terrifying and tantalizing. Death is an intimate presence, a lover, a muse, a fate already sealed. There is no plea for forgiveness, no illusion of escape: just a quiet, creeping recognition that the clock ticks on, that every breath is borrowed, and that when the moment comes, there will be no turning back.
Listen to the EP below and order the album here.
You can see BLXCKFLAMINGO live at TV Eye in Brooklyn on June 7th with Haunt Me.
Post-Punk.com caught up with BLXCKFLAMINGO about their influences and recording process:
Could you share any stories or personal anecdotes behind the writing or recording of these tracks? Whether it’s a lyrical twist, a recording challenge, or a memorable creative session, we’d love to hear the backstories.
Kevin: Our recording sessions are usually very productive and isolated. We try to meet up weekly and lay down ideas for a song every time. Roberto is really great with tracking my vocals, guitar, and synth and getting the best out of me…I think the most exciting and refreshing element of this project is the turnaround time in getting our songs completed…I think now we have that potential to make songs we really love. If we want to re-track anything any time, we have that freedom. If something sounds off or not to our liking in post production, we can go back in and make those adjustments within a short timeframe. I think having more freedom and control in our production really gets the best out of us and the potential for many more songs in the future.
Roberto: Kevin explained it perfectly when it comes to our expectations and feeding into our momentum. We like staying red hot and consistent with regards to being inspired, work ethic and song completion turnaround time. It can be really demotivating when you’re relying on other parties who didn’t write the music to get it done, only to hear that something within the song wasn’t a part of their vision or that someone’s coming up empty and delaying things. No more of that.
Which literary or poetic influences have impacted your songwriting? Are there particular authors or works that resonate with your lyrics and overall aesthetic?
Kevin: I’m not so much a poet reader as much as I am just an appreciator of clever written lyrics and theatre expressionism. I like any creator or artist that can push limits with their words or invoke strong emotions and new refreshing progressive concepts and ideas. I also just really enjoy the books of Bret Easton Ellis and Stephen King.
Roberto: I’ve always liked the aesthetics of 70s and 80s bands, especially David Bowie, Bauhaus, and specifically The Cure’s “Pornography” album. Having been in other bands over the years, I would always want to push for a darker aesthetic like that, but wouldn’t be comfortable going all out since it never really fit the vibe of whatever band I was in at the time. That isn’t the case with this style of music. Aesthetics should go hand in hand with the music, and much like theatre, live music is a performance art of its own where the audience is immersed by both the visuals and the sounds coming together as an experience.
How do you weave these literary influences into your lyrics? Can you share a moment when a line or idea from literature directly inspired a song?
Kevin: I definitely draw a lot of my lyrical inspiration from movies, books, and other bands. It’s really more of a subconscious thing. I don’t compartmentalize my art. It’s all just a cathartic way for me to make something inspired by something else I’ve experienced or seen. For example, if I’m watching a lot of true crime documentaries, I might try and incorporate it into a song about murder, death, and passion. That was pretty much where “Good morning Death, My Darling” came from. I recently watched the Robert Eggers movie Nosferatu and I loved it. I know I probably drew a lot from that as well.
How do you use your synths and guitars to create that dynamic interplay between light and dark?
Kevin: That was all probably by accident on my part haha. I usually come up with the guitar riff or some kind of hook then build it from there. The synth usually comes after the guitar and drums. I usually just try to feel what the song needs and go from there.
Roberto: Each idea is different from the previous one and we completely immerse ourselves in that one idea for the day before moving on to the next one. Life has its ups and downs and our music is a reflection of that in a way.
How important is melody in driving your songs, and how do dynamic, post-punk guitar hooks, comparable to Reg Smithies’ work in The Chameleons, influence your arrangements?
Kevin: I’ve seen The Chameleons twice here in Jersey City at White Eagle Hall. They are absolutely amazing and (Vox) has such a powerful presence in his voice. It sounds exactly the same as on their early Script of the Bridge album. It’s a real compliment to have that comparison, because I love their songs for those catchy powerful guitar riffs.
Roberto: We like to explore dynamics and jam, and just really feel it out at first. We explore parts and structures and then see what should repeat or change. The guitar sets a mood and then everything afterwards either follows it or complements it.
How do your individual roles and chosen instruments come together? Are there any unique setups or experimental techniques you rely on during recording?
Kevin: Usually I will come into our studio and start playing around with a riff or catchy hook and we build it from there. Vocals mostly come last. We both collaborate on synthesizers because it’s great to have that extra creative mind to bounce ideas off and to be involved in sharing the same vision. Roberto has been making music with me and collaborating on songs for a very long time. He understands how my crazy mind works haha. Sometimes I don’t have the words to describe the emotions or sound I’m trying to convey and he just gets what the song needs. It’s really hard to find that sometimes in bandmates. He’s the closest thing to a brother in music that I have and I’m thankful for all his contributions.
Roberto: As a bassist primarily, the root notes can really support the moods of each melody in a foundational way. The synth is usually the last layer instrumentally and I’m always trying to support each frequency range when it comes to tracking and sound design. Kevin’s guitars are a result of his pedalboards plugged in meeting his amp mic’d up since plugins would be an unjust imitation of his true guitar sound. Just like Kevin and knowing what guitar melodies he needs for each song, in a way, I have an ear for what the song needs layer-wise and sometimes its the experimental stuff just added in there. It could be asking him to use a different guitar for rhythms or lead tones, or us exploring different synth sounds, etc. A song like Brujeria has intro background noises that are a prime example of us experimenting with different sounds to fit the song with what it’s calling for in our heads.
You can also listen to the EP via Spotify here
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