Seattle’s The Darts return with “Apocalypse,” the second advance single from their upcoming LP Halloween Love Songs, arriving March 3. Where “Midnight Creep” danced in B-movie shadows, “Apocalypse” blows the door off the darker half of the album, leaning into caveman rhythms, volcanic fuzz, and the kind of apocalyptic joy that makes destruction sound like deliverance. The song was born in Angers, France, when singer/organ conjurer Nicole Laurenne wandered through the massive medieval Apocalypse Tapestry, a wall of woven chaos, angels, beasts, storms, the whole cosmic meltdown. Instead of doom, Nicole leaned into the strange liberation of burning it all down: freedom from suffering, freedom from crowns, freedom from being told what comes next. She wrote the line “no future, no kings” as a mantra of release — and a year later, as if the song had cracked something open, “No Kings” erupted as a protest chant across the U.S. All while the track existed only as a demo on her laptop.
Musically, “Apocalypse” hits like a ritual. A pounding, Neanderthal beat through the verses, wide-open chant on the chorus, and those snaking organ lines that nod straight to The Seeds, The Standells, and other 60s greats who knew how to make the end of the world sound like a block-party with broken amps. Rebecca Davidson’s guitar tone drags the song into modern grit with thick, grimy Mudhoney fuzz, a little L7 bite, and flashes of Bikini Kill’s unbottled anger. It’s garage rock with a cracked halo, stomped through the dirt and set on fire.
