Creativity Quote by Kenny Hickey

Kenny Hickey’s line has the casual shrug of a bandmate asked to explain a vibe that long ago stopped feeling like a choice. “We’ve always had a dark atmosphere” isn’t a manifesto; it’s a memory of momentum. The key move is the word “always,” which smuggles intention into inevitability. Darkness becomes less an aesthetic decision than a natural climate the group has been living in since the earliest gigs, before anyone named the genre, before critics started stapling meanings onto the lighting and the low end.

Then he undercuts any grand mythology with “sort of.” That little hedge is doing heavy work: it keeps the band from sounding self-important, while also implying that what fans hear as carefully curated gloom might have been a practical evolution - the rooms they played, the crowd they drew, the emotional temperature of the songs. “Developed along those ways” frames it as organic growth, not calculated branding. That’s a subtle flex. In rock culture, authenticity often means you didn’t chase a market; the market chased you.

The subtext is also defensive in a smart way. “Dark” is the kind of adjective that invites psychoanalysis and moral panic, especially for heavy music. Hickey sidesteps the trap by describing atmosphere, not ideology. It’s about performance texture: tone, pacing, presence, maybe the comfort of shadows onstage. He’s telling you the darkness isn’t a costume they put on - it’s the trail their music naturally leaves behind.