As befitting their moniker, Night Sins make music that could easily and equally serve as the perfect soundtrack to a very good night out or a very bad night out depending on how and when the drugs kick in and by “drugs” I mean “hugs” of course (stay off the drugs, fool!) and if you’re a sucker like I am for highly-emotive-yet-emotionally-distant death disco that makes you wanna dance into the abyss and to never, never ever come back down again (as Jarvis Cocker once opined “at four o'clock [in the morning] the normal world seems very, very, very far away”) then you should take a listen to their new single “Kill Like I Do” (Born Losers), a euphoric eulogy that puts across this vibe to the extreme.

Night Sins is a project helmed by Kyle Kimball and “Kill Like I Do” is the second advance single off their upcoming fifth album Violet Age due out this summer, a single that proves you can teach an old goth band new tricks with Kimball honing his “Sisters Of Xymox meets Clan Of Mercy as fronted by Dave ‘Marty Gore’ Gahan” aesthetic and pushing it into new territory while still hitting all the sweet spots—like the driving gated-reverb drumbeat and menacing synth-bass hook, the serpentine guitar line that doesn’t skimp on the shuddering flange or the dirty distortion, and the infectious little sing-songy toy keyboard melody similar to those featured in an least half of the Cure’s song intros and some New Order ones too.

And all this before the vocals even kick in (come inside and burn this all down / spread my ashes on the ground) vocals alternating between a creepily seductive stage whisper (a crucial vocal technique for any self-respecting dark wave singer!) and a double-tracked Peter Murphy-esque baritone that sounds like Bela Lugosi’s not feeling at all well. And you may ask yourself, "Where did such a potent doomy-yet-danceable fatalism originate from?” Well, according to Night Sins' official bio, the project emerged “around 2010 under the oppressive skies of Philadelphia…fitly connected to a city engrossed in shadow-soaked vices and dilapidated architecture” which makes me think “hmm is Philly actually the North American version of Manchester?” and I’m willing to believe it. So look out for Grand Theft Auto VI: The City of Brotherly Vehicular Manslaughter coming soon.

And when it comes to “shadow-soaked vices” Mr. Kimball has described “Kill Like I Do” as being a “metaphor for having zero self control…about not being able to stop until you've hit the floor” and hey I don’t wanna make too many assumptions here but it's my guess that in his other life pounding the skins for the Philly-based shoegaze mainstay Nothing for over a decade must have taught Kyle a thing or two about this type of subject matter. Just take a gander at Nothing’s Wikipedia page or Spotify bio etc. after which you’ll likely come away saying “here is a band that has seen, and somehow survived, some seriously f*cked up dark times” which fortunately-for-us-all Nothing's frontman Domenic "Nicky" is expert at trans-mutating into eviscerating, ethereal art…

…which Night Sins does too, but in their own form and fashion, shining an icy cold cold-wavey neon light into the darkness that, far from obliterating the gathering gloom, instead makes it sound newly romantic. (Jason Lee)

Young Swan recently released a new single called "Who's That?". This is the duo of Edmund Sinnott and Daniel Laumbacher and the single is their third of 2022.

Despite comparing themselves to Justin Bieber and Nickleback the duo is well worth a listen. They do lean towards the more polished and poppy side of Rock, but have an undeniable ability to craft something catchy.

Alt Rockers Ruthless Vision recently released a new single called "Stay".

This is the group fronted by Simran Singh, and the eight single from the group since debuting back in 2020.

I can totally get where Flycatcher is coming from with their new single ”Sodas in the Freezer” released earlier today and you probably can too because who amongst us hasn’t thrown a soda in the freezer out of sheer indolence and impatience eager for that damn Shasta to be ice freakin’ cold in a matter of minutes but then after a bong hit or six you totally forget about it with explosive consequences and now you’ve got a big mess to clean up but soon after you think to yourself “fuhgeddaboudit, accidents will happen!” and spark up a bowl and toss another Shasta into the icebox which is roughly equivalent to playing an April Fools’ joke on yourself over and over again which just goes to show how some of us never learn. 

And in case you think I’m just talking out my orifice again rest assured the band themselves have confirmed the theory above describing the song as being about “people's tendencies to acknowledge their shortcomings and poor behavior” while exhibiting a total “inaction to fix them” and when things escalate in the lyrics from a soda left in the freezer to our protagonist carelessly leaving a gas appliance on and seeing double from the fumes then the stakes of kitchen-based disaster are raised considerably along with the song’s metaphorical resonance in terms of humanity’s endless capacity for self-sabotage.

As far as a band bio goes Flycatcher are a four-piece rock combo hailing from New Brunswick, New Jersey, three of whom have immaculately sculpted facial hair (well ok one of them has a bushy beard but still it’s neatly trimmed and shaped) and come to think of it ever since residing in Jersey City a few year back I’ve had sculpted facial hair too so go figure. On the musical side of things Flycatcher carry on in the fine tradition of immaculately sculpted extremely catchy power-pop-that-rocks made in the Tristate Area with oft-witty lyrics and a distinctly que será, será attitude as established by such legendary acts as Fountains of Wayne, The Feelies, The Smithereens, and the ripe-for-revival Cucumbers.

Or as Flycatcher’s official bio puts it their music has a “driving, angular melancholy” which is a phrase I may have to steal and use elsewhere because that’s some high quality music crit-speak and certainly applicable in this case (check the melancholy in that floating-in-space bridge section yo) and maybe even more so for their previous single “Games” (see above plus you may wanna check out the band’s 2019 full-length Songs for Strangers too) and thank goodness because let’s be real no one really enjoys flaccid, perpendicular melancholy too much even if it’s omnipresent in today’s world. And finally, for all you true musos out there, here’s how lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Greg Pease describes the genesis of “Sodas in the Freezer”: 

The idea for the song was initially conceived back in 2017 when we performed it a handful of times during that summer. However, the only aspect of the song that truly remained unchanged was the intro/outro chromatic riff. As I was looking for new song ideas I kept playing that riff over and over and eventually found additional chord progressions that complemented it much better than the original composition. I spent the following months composing the lyrics and melodies while driving to and from work in an attempt to make use of time that was otherwise going to be lost to me. 

So let’s all follow Greg’s example and stop slacking during those long work commutes and start using the time to write songs about some of the terrible dangers that face us around every corner! (Jason Lee)