et's face it. THe LP is a dying art in an age where attention spans are limited to memes, tweets and two-minute STAR WARS trailers. And lets not even bring up the roll out for an LP. These days, you've got to make a massive impression with a single and a music video and goth rock siren MILITIA VOX has done so with her latest offering NYCTOPHILIA, a dark exploration into the human psyche and it's ability to haunt the streets late at night. Thematically, the moody single recalls the creepy, crawly theatricality of ALICE COOPER's WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE and the showmanship and hellbent delivery of SIOUXSIE SIOUX of SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES. Both the single and video have earned the woman raves from such sites as AFROPUNK.COM and have proven that the singer - famed for her vocal prowess for the JUDAS PRIEST tribute band JUDAS PRIEST - has a delivery and an artistry that is all her own.

Despite the shaky ground that the LP is on as an artistic medium, VOX is not giving up the ghost just yet. Her forthcoming album THE VILLAINESS has been in the works for a couple of years now. ROCKWIRED was first made aware of it when we profiled VOX back in late 2015, when she released her EP THE BAIT - a collection of moody, metal drenched covers. On that EP, her rendition of TINA TURNER's WE DON'T NEED NOTHER HERO demonstrated a battle readiness that  matched the tone of the MAD MAX movie that the sublime original tune was plucked from. THE VILLAINESS will feature all original songs and NYCTOPHILIA is just a taste of things to come. VOX is rolling this baby out just right. It doesn't sound like we're gonna have another CHINESE DEMOCRACY on our hands.

ROCKWIRED had a chance to speak with MILITIA VOX regarding the new single and her plans for the roll out of THE VILLAINESS. Here is how the interview went.

NYCTOPHILIA is quite a surprise and I love the music video. How did it all come together and who did you work with in putting the video together?
It was based off of an idea I had. I wanted to convey the idea of how people's energy can linger in placs, like hauntings. I'm a bit of an insomniac and I tend to wander the streets of the area I'm in, late at night. I live in New York City - the City That Never Sleeps, and I like to take a lot of late night walks and with this song I wanted to capture the idea of my energy lingering on certain streets. What if you could see that energy represented on film. I have a guy who shoots all of my stuff and of all of the clients he works with, he says that working with me is a unique situation. He never knows what he's going to shoot until he gets there. All I tell him is when and where we're going to shoot and to bring his camera and his tripod and that's it. That is all he knows when he walks in. 

You've been getting a lot of positive notices for this single and the video. What are your thoughts on the reaction to it.
It's cool! People are enjoying it. I love video as a medium just because I'm a visual person. I think most people prefer to see things and because of that, the visual medium is a very powerful medium. Sometimes, moreso than audio. For most people, visual is stronger than audio for whatever reason. I am enjoying directing this stuff onto video. I direct all of my own videos. I create all of it as far as content and visuals and the storyboarding. It's exciting to be able to further tell the story of a song.

CHECK OUT THE MUSiC ViDEO FOR NYCTOPHiLiA!!!

Now is this single a standalone effort or is this single preceding a new album?
Interestingly, NYCTOPHILIA was just supposed to be an album cut. That was the original intention, but I liked it way too much and everyone who listened to it liked it too much. So I said "Fuck it! I'll release it!"  So this song is leading up to the release of the full length album. Part of the reason that I'm building it up this way is because I come from the post Generation X, pre-millenial generation that has fallen into this gap that still reads and appreciates books and still listens to albums. But this millennial generation doesn' thave the attention span for an album anymore. If you're making an album you better have a damn good reason to be making one, like if you're signed to a label where they expect you to have an album out. I'm not signed. I have taken great pride in not being signed for a while now. I value my freedom. I don't like explaining myself to labels and things like that. I'm trying to build momentum and do some shows and release some songs before the record comes out.  I'm going to release the record, but I just don't think that people have the attention span to take it all in just yet. The record is in the can. I am one full length album and 2 EPs in, as far as my recording goes. I'm sitting on music that's not released yet and I feel that it's too much of an overload and now with the way things are politically, attention spans are that much shorter. Everything is going crazy. Mother Nature is pissed off. Storms are happening everywhere and there are all of these wildfires. Shit is pissy right now. There is a lot of fuckery going on and an album is not the thing that people are going to be directing their attention to. So I'm just going ot release cuts from the record slowly over time. Even I don't have the attention span to release a full length album all at once. There are so many things that I want people to pay attention to. 

Is that something you found to be true when you released the BAIT back in 2015?
That album was covers and I was trying to get  people excited  for this album. I did that album because people would complain that I never did any covers. So it was my way of saying "Okay! Here's a fucking album of covers!" With that album, I didn't want people ot think that was all that was coming. THE VILLAINESS is the album that is destined to come out when I feel like it. It's all a part of the package. It's a part of the same concept. It's both good and bad to be releasing things on this kind of timetable because to me some of the songs sound old already because I sat on them for a year or two. But in my opinion, it's the only way to do it. I could've released the whole record last year, but I thought it would have done the album a disservice. It's too chaotic of a world and the album would get lost inthe craziness. Everyone thinks, because you have more tools than ever to make music that you can put things out faster these days and you can. You can make music on your laptop or on your phone these days and you've got all kinds of people with the means to make music and shining for attention at the same time and that can be overwhelming as an artist who has actaully been doing music since they were a child and actually gives a fuck about the artform. There are a lot of vanity projects out there. That's cool for anyone who wants to make a vanity project but it ends up watering down the concept of making music. At least that's my opinion. 

And what about live shows?
In doing my solo thing, we had been playing out hard and fast for a while, so I have taken a little break in order to finish up some recordings. I'm always interested in recording more. As a matter of fact, I'm going to give you an exclusive here. I just finished another EP called HISS. I finished it earlier this year and I've just gotten into the mixing phase of it recently. I'm getting it mixed here in New York by my friend NICK CIPRIANO. He's worked with DEE SNYDER's band VAN HELSING'S CURSE. I'm in this place now where I know what it takes to make MILITIA VOX work live. I don't play live just to play live. I think of it like a Rolls Royce. You don't take it out to drive to the store.  If I want to play, it should be for something special. I've been lucky to play for some great events. I'm being more precious about it. I know that's a bad thing, but we were playing out constantly and I think that was to our detriment. I've become a more stingy lover.

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