Fawning, we’re brighter, we’re cautious,
Falling like fighters, we’re caustic.
Cracked up like actors, we’re lying.
Daydreams and nightmares.
Sharing cigarettes and leather trousers can feel like a promising start to eternity, until eternity begins to resemble an argument neither person can leave. Berlin’s Night Nail take that unhappy prospect to the dance floor on Vile Train, a gothic rock seduction in which two lovers become so absorbed in each other that escape begins to seem as impossible as happiness. The attraction is considerable; so is the damage.
The song previews Infinite Fountain, Night Nail’s fourth studio album, due November 6, 2026, through Icy Cold Records. Its accompanying video reunites the band with director and editor Jean De Oliviera, whose previous collaborations include Hollow Day, Little Armenia, and Narcoleptic Dream Catcher.
Vile Train begins with a noise suspended somewhere between a buzz and a screech, while cold guitar tones gather around it with considerable menace. The drums establish their footing before a heavier, sustained riff saws through the opening, its melody making the abrasion strangely inviting. Around the thirty-second mark, the bass enters with a deep, brooding groove, and the guitar shifts into a lower, more resonant register. That change gives the song a mournful richness, setting the scene for Brandon Robert’s dark, swaggering delivery.
Repeating synth figures tighten the tension beneath his voice, and roughly a minute in, the chorus sends the arrangement into a more urgent gothic dance beat. The construction is remarkably assured: each entrance increases the pressure, while the bass keeps enough melodic independence to make the groove feel alive. By the three-minute mark, its intricate phrasing has become a hook in its own right, moving beneath Robert’s breathy repetition of “Daydreams and nightmares” as a feminine voice echoes the words in whispers. The song’s pleasure comes from those relationships between the instruments, the way an ominous opening develops into something so physically persuasive.
Robert found the initial inspiration during a visit to Pompeii, where a fresco depicting an angel and a demon in an embrace suggested a romance with a particularly poor prognosis. In the song’s conception, two dreamers inhabit separate modern realities until their fantasies bring them together. They exchange clothes, cigarettes, and intimacies, gradually making a prison of the connection that first seemed to offer freedom. Robert describes the result as “dark and brutal truths about love sung in a twisted but beautiful way.”
The lyrics give that deterioration a nasty intimacy. Caution sits beside fawning, attraction beside aggression, and the lovers seem increasingly aware of the roles they have been playing. “Some days I wish I was her” carries the confusion further, towards the point where wanting another person begins to erase the distinction between their identity and your own. Against the recurring admission of lies, the fantasy of America offers another possible elsewhere. Every imagined exit seems to lead back to the same two people.
Vile Train was mixed and post-produced by William Faith at 13 Studio in Chicago, with co-production by Night Nail in Berlin and additional vocals and guitar from VV & the Void. That combination serves a song whose writing and arrangement make its gothic excess feel earned, with a chorus capable of turning private misery into a crowded dance floor.
Directed and edited by Jean De Oliviera, the video gives Vile Train a stark black-and-white treatment, cutting between Robert and bassist Ilija Gavrilenko performing among amplifiers and outdoor shots framed by stone arches and fountain basins. Black leather, dark glasses, and severe makeup give the pair a suitably funereal glamour, while tight shots of fingers on strings bring the song’s instrumental interplay into focus. Robert’s face repeatedly fills the frame, his dark lipstick and pale features isolated against the black background.
Grain, scratches, and superimposed silhouettes of reaching hands disturb that severe simplicity, spreading across faces and instruments until the musicians seem caught behind the image itself. Robert’s own gestures towards the lens make the camera feel uncomfortably close, turning performance into something between an invitation and an accusation. The recurring close-ups and grasping hands give the song’s obsession a physical form, suggesting an intimacy that has become impossible to escape. It is an effective visual rendering of what the band calls the “afterlife of relationship hell,” where the desire to hold someone close has acquired a distinctly claustrophobic meaning.
Watch the video for Vile Train below:
Formed in Los Angeles in 2013, Night Nail relocated to Berlin in 2018, the year their debut album LA Demons appeared on Cleopatra Records. March To Autumn followed through Cold Transmission in 2020, with Fates Explained arriving on Metropolis Records in 2023. The archival release Early Demons and Demos and remix album Fates Remade followed in 2024. Their earlier work with producer Pete Burns of Kill Shelter helped establish a catalogue that connects darkwave electronics with gothic rock’s appetite for emotional extremes.
Infinite Fountain also includes mixing and post-production work by Sven Wolff of Patenbrigade: Wolff. Night Nail plans to support the album with shows across the US, UK, and Europe during 2026–2027. In the meantime, explore their back catalog on Bandcamp.
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The post “Daydreams and Nightmares” — Night Nail Turns Desire Into Damnation in Video for “Vile Train” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
