Burning in fire, uncontrollable
Fears and furies crying
Violent dreams and primitive needs
Rising through the shadows
Born beneath the blackened boughs of New Orleans’ December chill, Missing emerged in 2016: an ensemble as wild as wisteria, fronted by vocalist and songwriter James White, flanked by founding guitarists Brenner Moate and Trevor Pink, with Jon Smith anchoring basslines and Ian Paine-Jesam pounding percussion. Together, they conjure torrential tempests of post-punk and gothic rock where love, loss, and longing collide: spiderwebbed guitars stretching taut over fuzz-drenched bass, drumbeats cracking like thunder.
Missing channels the brute force brooding of Killing Joke, the wounded romance of The Cure, the theatrical swoon of The Mission and HIM, and the melodic sprawl and shredding snarl of The Chameleons, yet their alchemy dissolves into something singular: equal parts elegy and eruption.
Their sophomore album, Nocturnalia, arrives as a bruised and brooding monolith—a collection steeped in trauma’s tangled grip. Each track sways between despair and defiance, scraping raw nerves while offering the faint glimmer of repair. It’s a midnight march through ruin and reckoning, where bridges burn but embers linger, fences splinter but can be spliced. Nocturnalia claws its way out, bearing the scars, carrying the weight, building something sturdier from broken bones. An album as relentless as rain, yet stubbornly stitched with the belief that even the bleakest nights break eventually.
The curtain rises with Prologue, a brooding instrumental brew that nods to the murk of Type O Negative and the churn of Alice In Chains, a foreboding overture steeped in sludgy allure.
Black Moon Lilith opens with a mesmerizing vocal croon, intertwined with a gradually intensifying tempest of guitar and drums. This fevered odyssey plunges into a realm of fire-lit thrones and fractured identities, where primal instincts writhe beneath shattered crowns. Guitars roar and blaze, while the vocals simmer with a barely contained urgency, clawing at the shackles of self-imposed exile.
Cult of Bleeding Hearts, with its dreamy guitar textures, spirals deeper, draped in ritualistic anguish: religious relics, romantic ruin, and the restless plea for mercy mingling in the flames. Here, love and suffering blur, as guitars scald and vocals ache with sacrificial intensity.
Then comes Ruined Gold, a gilded waltz for the damned. Beneath watchful suns and polished façades, dancers sway on bleeding feet, masking wounds beneath feigned poise. Each note a clenched jaw, each lyric a quiet collapse hidden behind the glimmer.
In The Key of Silence unravels like a sinister lullaby, steeped in eerie whispers and creeping dread. They chart a descent into isolation and disintegration as the vocals strengthen into song, where trembling bodies and burdened minds slip between waking and nightmare. Crumbling walls, cold winds, and distant voices echo throughout, as the narrator drifts toward a darker refuge.
Lone Souls drifts through deserted hallways and half-remembered dreams, tracing the outline of a life lived at arm’s length. It’s a dirge for the disconnected, a dirge for the damned; where mirrors offer no comfort and silence screams louder than company. In this void, voices fray, and throats tear, caught in an endless loop of solitary suffering, echoing into the void.
Wildfire Eyes detonates in delirium; a barrage of snarls and shrieks clawing at the frayed fabric of self. Spirits shriek, identities splinter, and fury boils beneath trembling skin. The mind snaps, the mask slips, and chaos calls. Bridges buckle, hearts stammer, and with every breath, the darkness digs deeper.
A Shadow In Every Corner is a hymn to despair, where cold winds ignite old ghosts and scrawled verses haunt the walls. Shackled by vice, scarred by strife, the speaker staggers through rooms where misery nests, waiting in every crack, trailing every step. The album closes with another instrumental: Epilogue.
Listen to Nocturnalia below and order the album here.
Missing will be going on tour this April, supporting Rosegarden Funeral Party. Catch them on the following dates!
Missing Tour Dates:
- 3 April Albuquerque, NM at Launchpad
- 4 April Phoenix, AZ at Last Exit
- 5 April Yuma, AZ at Tarros Chicales
- 6 April San Diego, CA at Whistle Stop
- 8 April Los Angeles, CA at Moroccan Lounge
- 9 April San Francisco, CA at The Knockout
- 11 April Portland, OR at Coffin Club
- 12 April Seattle, WA at Fun House
- 14 April Salt Lake City, UT at Urban Lounge
- 15 April Denver, CO at HQ
- 17 April Omaha, NE at Reverb Lounge
- 19 April Seacry, AR at Citizen Park
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