Ashton Nyte fell in love. He essentially fell for everything—the bands, albums, songs, theatrics—that made him develop the Awakening in the mid-1990s, while still living in South Africa. “I fell in love with the art and the artists that inspired me to create as the Awakening in the first place, and it was completely organic,” says Nyte.
“It was just one day of ‘I feel like putting on ‘Floodland’ [Sisters of Mercy] and now I feel like listening to [Bauhaus‘]‘In the Flat Field’,” adds Nyte. “Something ignited, and I was going with it and enjoying this mood of celebration of the origin. In the process, I fell in love with the Awakening again.”
Initially planning to release an EP of new music from the Awakening, one thing (song), led to another, and Nyte found himself with 30 tracks and the premise of a new album. “It’s full circle in a way that I’ve literally gone back to the starting point of what inspired me,” shares Nyte. “But it feels like a new chapter because it’s almost like a reset. When you’ve got 25 years of history and 11 albums—not to mention all the solo work and everything—it’s a rebirth of sorts, along with the Awakening being synonymous with rebirth and those sorts of themes in the name itself.”
The band moniker also prompted Nyte to release the first self-titled album by the Awakening since its inception in 1995 and 1997 debut Risen. He even put his face on the cover—another first. “I generally don’t do that for any of my albums, let alone the Awakening,” says Nyte, “so it was owning that it’s always been me, and it’s always been my baby, and it’s very much part of me, and always will be.”
He adds, “I have used the word celebrate a lot when describing this album because it really is that for me. It’s a celebration of the things that made me want to do this and have essentially made me want to keep doing it. It’s a celebration of the career and the life I’ve had thanks to my work as the Awakening and the wonderful fans I have who allow me to keep doing it, and the celebration of what lies ahead.”
The celebration of The Awakening opens on “Shimmer,” a stark prelude before “Mirror Midnight,” exploring the detriments of self-absorption—Along the edges / Of this life / A thousand voices / Singing in denial—and darker waves on the heavier “Through the Veil,” a story about someone who’s no longer of this earth and wanting desperately to make contact with the loved one they’ve left behind. “See You Fall,” “Fallout,” and “Haunting” fill something more opaquely goth. The latter, written by Nyte years earlier is one he calls the most “whimsical” on the album.
“It’s a wink at the camera song because it’s embracing the idea of being haunted by somebody or the memory of somebody, rather than being frightened, upset, or freaked out,” says Nyte of “Haunting.” He adds, “It’s taking it the whole way by using all the tropes and all of the references to the ‘circle of salt’ and the cards and candles—everything’s in there. It’s not meant to make fun of anything, it’s meant to have fun with it. As a card-carrying member of the goth community, I think I’m allowed to do that.”
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Weaved in between is the mellowed “Your Vampire,” and “Below the Emptiness,” which initially started as a piano interlude. “I started hearing a vocal melody and realized that it stood up as a song,” says Nyte. “And I loved the message. I like the blend of personal and political, the relationship songs versus the introspective songs.”
At just under a minute, “Sliver” leaves one more pause in front of the slower burning “Not Here,” and soaring “Cabaret,” the longest track at just over four minutes 30 seconds. Along with “See You Fall,” “Cabaret” is one of the older tracks Nyte first formulated 10 to 12 years earlier while he was working on The Awakening’s 2009 album Tales of Absolution and Obsoletion.
“‘Tales’ is still my favorite standalone Awakening record in terms of capturing what I wanted to capture at the time,” Nyte reveals. “They [the songs] wouldn’t have fit on ‘Tales.’ They have a slightly different energy, and I’ve revisited them a couple of times over the years.”
“Cabaret” nearly made it onto Nyte’s 2015 solo album Some Kind of Satellite. “I don’t think that new is necessarily better,” says Nyte on his archive of older songs. “Sometimes songs have a place, and sometimes they have to wait.”
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Making The Awakening felt liberating for Nyte since, he says, artists and bands often become pigeonholed by what they’ve previously created. “It’s akin to meeting up with some old friends for a glass of wine, and you decide you’re going to have dinner, and then after that dinner, you have a party somewhere, and the party lasts for weeks on end,” says Nyte. “That’s how this has been. It’s been me reacquainting myself with my influences, and then reacquainting myself with the headspace I was in when I discovered all of that.”
The Awakening closes at the beginning, on “Continuum,” the first new song Nyte wrote for the record. “I think the work ultimately dictates what it needs as a body of work,” says Nyte, who admits to tapping into multiple energies on every album. “I’m still someone who thinks in terms of albums, for better or worse. I like the record to have a beginning, middle, and end. I like having intros and instrumental breaks, having grown up on Pink Floyd and bands like that, a tiny bit of that concept album tends to creep in here and there.”
It was also important for Nyte to “shake” things up on The Awakening and not produce one-dimensional songs. “’Below the Emptiness,’ ‘Continuum,’ and ‘Not Here’ are the most introspective, self-focused songs on the album,” shares Nyte. “‘Your Vampire’ and ‘Through the Veil’ are your classic, tortured Goth love songs with wonderful Gothic imagery. On the surface, if someone sees a song called ‘Your Vampire,’ they may jump to a certain conclusion, but the songs are far more than that. I loved using that imagery [on ‘Your Vampire’] to tell a story about commitment. It’s a story about being in it for life with somebody.”
When visualizing the songs, the film noir aesthetic of Nyte’s music videos helps mirror his soundscape, including the black and white vignette for “Mirror Midnight,” which reached nearly 500,000 views on YouTube. Filmed and edited by Nyte, the sharp scenes depict the discord of self-love—and hate—under the influence of social media and other outside forces.
“I love watching films by Ingmar Bergman,” says Nyte. “He managed to tell these layered stories using three or four actors on an island with great artistic camera work. It appeals to my punk rock-DIY ethic, and the spirit of minimalism, which I think are all interwoven. And if you get the balance right, the sum is far greater than the parts.”
Black and white, the viewers’ attention is drawn in differently, says Nyte. “There are fewer colors to distract you, but there’s also an otherness to it,” he adds. “It puts you in a different realm, a different mindset to appreciate whatever it is you’re experiencing. Of course, there’s also a romance and a nostalgia to it. If I ever make a film, it’s probably going to be shot in a very similar way.”
For The Awakening, Nyte also wanted to extend his songwriting, lyrically, by revisiting and celebrating what influenced him. “I wanted the music to evoke the spirit of that ‘80s underground scene that got me so excited about this all in the first place,” he says, “and write really good songs on top of that.”
As for Nyte’s solo career, spanning eight albums from 2000 debut The Slender Nudes through Autumn’s Children, it’s something he says will only influence The Awakening, and vice versa, moving forward. “There are always going to be a few songs that could probably go either way, but I don’t feel this anxious need to separate it all,” says Nyte. “It really was as simple as I fell in love with it all again, and I wanted to make something that reflected that. I wanted to wear my influences on my sleeve.”
He continued, “I think there’s this obsession we have with trying to be so damn original, but no one really is in 2024. Do you want to tell me that you existed in some bubble outside of everything that came before? No. We all owe a debt to those who’ve gone before and within goth and dark wave, we all have a debt to David Bowie, and Klaus Nomi … there are so many forerunners with each thing. Before that, you had Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and more before them.”
Nyte also hopes that The Awakening can “set the record straight” about the future of the project following its previous albums, This Alchemy (2021) and The Passage Remains (2022), which were recorded and produced by Nyte during the pandemic, along with his 2023 solo album Autumn’s Children and a second book of poetry and stories of the same name, following a similar pattern to Waiting for a Voice in 2020.
“I didn’t have a pandemic album, I had a quartet,” jokes Nyte. “‘Waiting For a Voice’ was essentially created pre-pandemic, but everything that followed was from a space of isolation and ‘Are we ever going to play live again?’ With the Awakening, I explored other avenues and on a subconscious level, maybe it was this desire to break new ground. But with the world essentially opening up again, I wanted to reclaim the band, what it’s known for, what it can continue to be known for, and the hopefully positive effect it can have on anybody exposed to this work.”
Following a hiatus from live shows, The Awakening is set for a run of dates in the UK and Europe in 2025, along with deluxe reissues of the band’s earlier releases. The Awakening will also headline Glom Fest, a new festival that will bring the band, along with an ensemble of other darker acts, on a four-day run of shows along the West Coast from the U.S. and into Canada.
For Nyte, who scored the 2019 film Don’t Let Go with composer Ethan Gold and whose music was recently featured in the 2024 dark drama Pale Horse, the final film by late Singaporean filmmaker Pearry Teo, along with previous television in Little Liars: Original Sin, The Purge, there’s also an element of theater to contend with, around the Awakening.
In May 2001, Nyte wrote his debut theater production around his solo debut with The Slender Nudes Cabaret at Die Teaterhuisie Theatre in Pretoria, South Africa. He later wrote and starred in an adaptation of his 2003 album, Sinister Swing at the University of Pretoria. “What I reminded myself of as I was doing this is that it is theater,” says Nyte. “I can go the whole way with this. I can go as crazy as I want with this. That’s what drew me to it all in the first place.”
As everything continues falling back into place for The Awakening, Nyte keeps returning to the word “celebration” when thinking of the new album, and this new chapter. For Nyte, The Awakening is “synonymous with reclaiming something,” even 25-plus years later.
“It’s not ‘Oh, look I’ve arrived,’” says Nyte. It’s ‘I’m really into this. I’m really proud of the life that this has given me—of all the things I get to do, the people I’ve worked with, the collaborations. It’s everything that was essentially born out of some young guy in his teens in South Africa a million miles away from everything, dreaming up this project before the Internet was telling us what was cool.”
Photos: Courtesy of Ashton Nyte
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