Album Review: Curse Mackey - Imaginary Enemies
- Canis Lewis
- Oct 5
- 6 min read
What's more Goth than dark poetry, sick synths, and a voice born from darkness? Curse Mackey has released an intellectual's dream album filled with poignancy, storytelling, poetry, and a deep, deep dive into the mind of a man haunted by the past.This album has two of the finest tracks I've heard this year, come see for yourselves which ones!
July 15th, 2025 - Negative Gain Productions recording artist, CURSE MACKEY 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.
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Review
A tongue in cheek news bulletin about the rapture introduces the album in 'Doomed For Monday' and sets a decent precedent. Curse has a great Gothic voice - as expected - and gets warped in to sounding like an automaton for a few seconds which is a nice touch. The track vibes out to some chilled synths and beats, focusing more on the lyrical content, like Darkwave 'chill' which keeps you bopping along contently. 'Vertigo Ego' styles out a sort of horror rock vocal that reminds me of the band 'Bellhead'. The sounds and tones used are deep, slow, giving a sense of the unstoppable, which of course compliments the lyrics themselves very well!
Monsters come after you, when you are alone in the dark, when you are alone in the dark....
You can tell that Curse isn't referring to physical and external monsters here, but the personal demons that confront us when alone. Some of the synths at 3:20 add an uplifting end to the darkness, and the track fades out with an ethereal sound. A great track! 'Discoccult' slaps! Once the drum kicks in to set the tempo, you can tell straight away that this track is gonna be tasty! Goth itself as a genre, darkwave, and such is usually a little hard to dance to if you're not too experienced with the old school styles of dance, yet this track blends a tempo and feeling of new age electronic that is easy to move to, whilst retaining that nostalgic retro Goth essence. As expected the lyrics are as Goth and dark as expected, if not more so. Probably my favourite track of the album.
Hail Mary full of rage
'Time Comes Clean' has a nostalgic, early 2000's stage of the internet feel to it. It's a slow burn track with the message of wisdom that comes only from time and experience. 'Blood Like Love' also follows this slower tempo look back on a love once had. You can tell there is a lot of real world inspiration that drips from the lyrics, rather than something just written for the sake of writing a song. There is a real sense of pain, reflection, and loss. The samples of the lady reading poetry is also a wonderful touch.
A bit of a Pink Floyd touch with 'Star Witness', with it's somewhat manic storytelling, sound hooks, vocal stressors, and political pokes. The sound is a mix of bassy synths and keyboard backed by a decent tempo keeping the energy smooth the whole way through.
'Who Knows Where' is a chillout track that still dances through memory, it feels like a self exploration trip. A moment of clarity in a sea of painful recollections. The (almost) title track of the album 'Imaginary Enemy' starts with an interesting sounds almost akin to a Geiger counter. When Curse's vocals start, they are deeper, boomier, and very much remind me of the great band Massive Ego. The lyrics are full of great lines of gold..
You think they're out to get you, The sad fact is they don't give a damn about you. Smoking tongue, poison truth, as your dark clouds gather around you. An invisible entity wages war inside your head. It's you against you, A strange fight to the end
Another great self reflection song with a decent tempo and mix of sounds from the synths to the bass guitar keeping the energy high and the feet moving.
'The Kindness Of Serpents' is a low tempo synth chill track until 1:31 when it becomes a chaotic mind twist, a trip through dark poetry and questioning of religion. The final track of 'Six Ghosts Of Fear' is fascinating, as it uses a sample that chops up and puts backs together an abridged version of Edgar Alan Poe's 'Alone' as well as adding in other lines of poetry from other artists such as Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot, and many more to complement the track. It is one of the most interesting and captivating tracks I have heard in a long, long time that fires my need to know more, to hear more, to understand exactly what the hidden message amongst all of these well known messages is..
This is an absolute stunning piece of art that some would view as poetic heresy, but I find this to be a beautiful amalgamation of some of the finest the minds of humanity. Bravo Curse Mackey, Bravo!
Conclusion
From the darkly poetic mind of Curse Mackey, Imaginary Enemies is a deeply fascinating experience. From the dance filled joy of a disco, to the walk back home through the darkest - most dangerous unlit alleyways of memory filled with personal Demons; To the anger and questioning of power, and to the final exploration of the human mind through the medium of multiple historical figureheads' poetry, this album is one for the Sapiosexuals!
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