I walk through fire with my head held high
Is that really such a crime?
Leaving a faith can redraw the borders of reality. Certainties that once governed time, guilt, desire, and the fate of the self fall away at once, leaving freedom inseparable from vertigo. A person must decide which pieces of the old world deserve burial, which can be carried forward, and how to inhabit a life no longer mapped by inherited answers.
Portland post-punk quartet Nyx Division enters that exposed territory with By Design, a new single rooted in vocalist Domino Monet’s experience of escaping the Mormon church. Released ahead of the band’s East Coast dates, including a set at NYC’s A Murder of Crows, the song follows the collapse of a prescribed worldview into the frightening, sensuous freedom of choosing what comes next. Monet describes the subject as “the liminal expanse between awe and terror,” where ontological loss meets the exhilaration of reconstructing a world from its broken pieces.
By Design opens with acoustic guitar and a dry, vibraslap-like rattle, setting a touch of spaghetti-Western theater ahead of Monet’s first lines. The full band soon bears down through Justin Cory’s heavy guitar figures and Mason Wilkinson’s firm percussion, while Alex Rivas sends a nimble bassline dancing underneath. As the initial force relaxes into a melodic groove, the track takes on a psychedelic hue. Cory’s guitar reaches toward the broad alt-rock and shoegaze sweep of bands like Catherine Wheel while retaining the core rhythmic pull of 80s post-punk.
Monet supplies the song’s greatest sense of scale. Her held notes tremble with heat and conviction, drawing upon the commanding tradition of women rock singers from the 1970s and ’80s. Fire, memory, sin, and survival pass through the lyrics as lived conditions rather than decoration. The repeated title carries a productive reversal: language often used to justify a divinely ordered universe becomes a declaration of self-authorship. Design now belongs to the person who endured the old plan and walked away with the right to make another.
That tension gives the track its lift. The music recognizes the cost of departure while making room for appetite, beauty, and volition. Its dance-floor momentum feels connected to the body’s return after years spent beneath doctrine, and its desert atmosphere suggests an open horizon where terror and possibility share the same immense sky.
Listen to By Design below:
Formed in Portland in 2021, Nyx Division brings post-punk, goth, and rock ’n’ roll into a muscular, romantic union. The group released the Dark Star EP in 2022, followed by the 2025 singles Soldier of Love and Midnight Lights. By Design expands that approach through acoustic color, psychedelic breadth, and a hard-earned sense of release.
Nyx Division now heads across the East Coast for four early-September appearances. The band shares the Philadelphia, Worcester, and Cambridge dates with eX-Tradition. Their September 4 stop places them at New York’s Bowery Ballroom for the first of the festival’s two main nights at A Murder of Crows XI, appearing alongside Anja Huwe, Rosegarden Funeral Party, Creux Lies, and Guilty Strangers.
Nyx Division East Coast Tour Dates
September 3 — Philadelphia, PA — Cousin Danny’s Lounge, with eX-Tradition, NRG, and Subtle Body
September 4 — New York, NY — Bowery Ballroom, A Murder of Crows XI
September 5 — Worcester, MA — Distant Castle, with eX-Tradition
September 6 — Cambridge, MA — Middle East Upstairs, with eX-Tradition
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The post “I Feel Like a Star Again” — Nyx Division Become the Architects of Their Own Destiny in “By Design” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.