For some, love is not a salve but a sickness, a cycle that turns endlessly, feeding on fears and wounds that never close. The world brims with faces, yet loneliness reigns. A cry without an answer, a touch without warmth, a heart that beats, but for what? Italian goth outfit Date At Midnight’s Useless Love asks the tough questions, but offers no mercy in the silence that follows.
Date at Midnight crafts their name in electric lament, a band built on reverence and reinvention. Since 2007, they have stalked the stages of Rome and beyond, their sound bearing the smudged fingerprints of Joy Division, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, and Fields of the Nephilim. Daniele De Angelis (voice), Pasquale Vico (bass & synth), Francesco Mignogna (drums), and Nunzio Biviano (guitar, synth) form a quartet steeped in the fever of post-punk’s past but bent toward something rawer, colder, sharper.
Useless Love, drips with resignation, its synths swelling like an unspoken confession, its guitars rising like a distant siren. Pulled from their fifth album, Fading Into This Grace (Manic Depression Records, 2024), the track aches with the weight of disconnection, longing, and the slow erosion of hope. A “shining shadow” looms: a flicker of something beautiful, just beyond reach, forever dissolving in the glass.
The band has released a video comprised of live footage captured by fans during some of the band’s performances of the 2024 leg of their Into This Grace Tour. The tour continues throughout 2025 with additional shows in France, Spain, Italy, and a special appearance at the Prague Gothic Treffen in August.
“We loved the idea of the juxtaposition between Useless Love and the Totalizing Love that we feel when we are on stage, which is the result of the mix between our live attitude and the passionate reception we receive from both old and new fans every time we play live,” they say. “This is something we wanted to acknowledge also by including in the final cut some very ‘low-fi’ materials, as a symbol of a pure, authentic, and genuine connection we have with our audience.”
Watch the video for “Useless Love” below:
Date at Midnight rose from the underground with a sound as cold as steel and as sharp as longing. Their 2008 self-titled debut EP marked their arrival, but No Love (2011), their first release on French label Manic Depression Records, carved their name into the walls of Europe’s darkened halls. The press took notice, audiences swayed in reverence, and the band found themselves constantly in motion, turning dim-lit stages into altars of rhythm and release.
By 2016, their evolution took form in Songs to Fall and Forget, an album laced with the brittle beauty of darkwave and the raw bite of post-punk. Reverse Resilience (2018) saw them shapeshift once more, bending synths into haunted landscapes, refining their sound without losing its fire. In May 2024, they unveiled Fading Into This Grace.
In May 2024, the band released the new album Fading Into This Grace for Manic Depression Records, available in vinyl, Digipack, and Digital formats. The work reaffirms Date at Midnight as one of the most influential Italian bands in the current goth landscape.
Listen to Fading Into This Grace below and order the album here.
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