CURSE MACKEY Unveils ‘Imaginary Enemies’, A Darkwave Descent Into Grief & Revelation
Negative Gain Productions recording artist, CURSE MACKEY has just unveiled his highly-anticipated new album, Imaginary Enemies.
Curse's most intense and intimate album to date, Imaginary Enemies is a bleak, beautiful meditation on paranoia, grief, and the ghosts we conjure from within. Imaginary Enemies explores the liminal space between identity and illusion. A darkwave exorcism for the fractured self, it resonates with fans of Clan of Xymox, HEALTH, Skinny Puppy, Gary Numan, Twin Tribes & Cold.
CURSE MACKEY channels the ghosts of self-destruction, martyrdom, and revelation across tracks like "Doomed for Monday", "Time Comes Clean", and "The Kindness of Serpents". His voice drips with urgency, steeped in internal collapse and spiritual trespass. The grief-stricken ache of "Blood Like Love" serves as the album's aching heart: a poetic elegy rendered in grief-soaked melody and lyrical fire. Meanwhile, lead single, "Vertigo Ego" - a track of nocturnal paranoia, asks, “What monsters come after you when you are alone in the dark?”
Blending the raw aggression of early Wax Trax!/90’s era industrial music with cinematic darkwave atmospheres and hard-earned poetic insight, the album unfolds across gritty city streets and the shadowed corners of the mind, where desire blurs with danger and monsters move in silence.
Fueled by modular synths, jackhammer beats, spectral drones, and disembodied spoken word samples, Imaginary Enemies pulses with post-pandemic urgency and late-night mystery. Mackey’s ritualistic vocal delivery cuts like a psychic transmission, charting an intimate descent through fear, ecstasy, and invisible wars within. This is music for the haunted hours: seductive, volatile, and uncomfortably honest.
Imaginary Enemies concludes a trilogy that began with Instant Exorcism (2019) and deepened with Immoral Emporium (2022). Where Exorcism confronted internal chaos and Emporium explored societal decay, Enemies is a haunting culmination, mourning creative and personal losses while reaching for redemption in the wreckage.
Produced by Curse Mackey and longtime collaborator Chase Dobson, Imaginary Enemies features contributions from Jake Garcia (The Black Angels) and Rona Rougeheart (SINE), adding depth and tension to an already immersive soundscape. The result is intimate yet cinematic, insular yet explosively alive.
Imaginary Enemies is Mackey’s heaviest, most deliberate work yet. A fully realized vision carved from shadow and memory. It doesn’t just resonate with the pulse of darkwave, it haunts it. The album is a requiem, a ritual, and a rallying cry for those who live and create in the margins, carrying their ghosts with grace.
Imaginary Enemies is available on CD, vinyl LP and also on digital platforms everywhere including Spotify and Bandcamp.
