Midnight and the stars hang so low
Making your eyes burn like a halo
It’s alright, baby let your hair hang down
Just tonight, be the fool with a crown
The lights in Portland carry a particular kind of shimmerless glow: industrial, uneasy, freighted with memory. Out of that glow, in the hush and havoc of 2021, Nyx Division formed. Four figures bound together by riffs and rhythm, they built their sound while the world folded in on itself. Global isolation, corrupt politics, collapsing trust: the conditions for their arrival were nothing short of apocalyptic. Nyx Division chose to offer us a reminder that movement is resistance and the floor is sanctuary.
Their debut full-length Midnight Lights feels less like a record than a strike of phosphor against concrete. On the title track, Midnight Lights, Alex Rivas’s bass throbs like an artery, while Mason Wilkinson’s drumming turns each track into a call to arms for the body. Newcomer Justin Cory splinters the sound with guitars that thread menace and glitter in equal measure. And at the centre, Domîno Monët sings as though every vowel might open another world: soaring, pleading, daring the listener to step closer to the flame.
Midnight Lights is a fevered rendezvous: a disco lit by the moon and haunted by possibility. Its lyrics fixate on eyes, halos, the promise of passion suspended in time. What the words describe is fleeting: two people caught at the edge of departure, but what the band delivers is permanence, the kind of chorus that feels tattooed across the evening.
There are echoes of their influences: Killing Joke’s militant repetition, Thin Lizzy’s metallic grace, the gauze of Cocteau Twins and the passion of The Cult – but Nyx Division also yanks disco strobe into their brand of goth rock, let heavy metal muscle shoulder against post-punk cool down, then lace the whole affair with a queer sensibility that insists on desire as defiance. These are not borrowed poses but lived declarations, electrified by personal urgency.
The visuals add another layer. Olivia Bayer’s video for Midnight Lights places the band in a club thick with skulls, webs, and red wash, a theatre of the macabre that somehow still invites communion.
Watch the video for “Midnight Lights” below:
Three years since their inception, Nyx Division are no longer a project born of crisis but a group fully in motion. Midnight Lights is the evidence. It is high-voltage, unsentimental, full of desire and drive. It wants you on your feet, singing as though your voice could hold the world steady for one more night. In the culture of collapse, they conjure resilience, and they do it to the beat.
The band will also be offering the Midnight Lights zine, containing essays by Monet that delve into the themes and meaning behind the songs from Midnight Lights! The zine will be available in print when the album is released and digitally with downloads direct from the band’s Bandcamp.
Listen to Midnight Lights below and order the album here.
Catch them live:
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Sep 12 Black Water Bar Portland, OR
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Sep 13 Merry Time Bar & Grill Astoria, OR
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