Did you have to betray me
Acting like you didn’t care?
Stripped away my sanity
Turned your bed into my grave —
Betrayal doesn’t arrive with impact; it slips in through absence. Those questions linger because they’re asked too late—after care has already been performed, after intimacy has been misread as safety. What corrodes isn’t only the act itself, but the discipline of pretending it didn’t happen: calling withdrawal patience, renaming endurance as faith, learning to survive by softening the truth. In that quiet bargain, optimism becomes complicit, and damage is framed as growth.
That emotional stalemate is the terrain Violentene enters on Victims Of Light. The Ottawa-based synth duo announces the single with pressure already in motion, translating psychological erosion into structure. A firm bassline sets the pulse, steering the track toward darker ground before lighter melodic figures drift through—sweet, but never reassuring, offering contrast without relief.
There’s a measured, deliberate, unflashy coolness to Victims Of Light, a quality that emphasizes a calm confidence. Density and release are allowed to coexist in the same breath, creating a balanced tension. Mvrijo’s effervescent vocal delivery moves fluidly through this landscape. The weight arrives through control rather than excess. The track builds steadily, then thins into something quietly addictive, leaving behind a soft afterimage that feels reassuring and uneasy in equal measure. Pleasure exists here, but it never resolves the tension that drives the song forward. That balance places Violentene in conversation with the poised tension associated with Ladytron, the crisp emotional framing often linked to CHVRCHES, and the colder, ceremonial focus found in Zanias’ work, while faint echoes of Berlin and Toyah surface.
Lyrically, Victims Of Light returns to cycles of loss and persistence. Sanity slips, nights are awaited, and survival becomes a rehearsed act rather than a declaration. Rebirth is framed as a process, not a payoff: thicker skin forms through repetition, chains break through effort rather than revelation. The song ends without closure, choosing continuation instead, accepting that clarity rarely brings peace.
“Mvrijo and I are excited to release this final single prior to our new EP of the same name!” says Roland M. Victims of Light came together from a bass line I’d been working on that was pushing the vibe into an edgier, darker place, but then Mvrijo came up with the melody for the chorus which propelled things into this sweet blissed out territory, and we decided the two could exist together in the same song happily! We love this one!!”
Victims Of Light is out now. Listen below and order the single here.
As the final single ahead of their forthcoming EP of the same name, the track signals a tightening of focus. Violentene sound invested in articulation over escape. The genre markers – synthpop, retrowave, darkwave, dreampop, synthwave – serve mood and meaning. This is late-hour music that rewards attention, its pleasures subtle, its tensions sustained.
The Victims Of Light EP will arrive in March 2026.
Follow Violentene:
Or via: