Nico

Lore & Background

In the Trench narrative, the city is a closed, suffocating system governed by the Nine Nics—figures who maintain order through control, ritual, and the suppression of individual will. Nico, as a member of this inner circle, represents the institutional face of that control: not a single villain with a personal grudge, but a node in a network of authority that keeps the citizens of Trench in a state of learned helplessness. The Nics are depicted in the 2018 'Trench' album artwork as a ring of robed, symbol-bearing figures surrounding the central imagery, reinforcing their role as an inseparable collective rather than isolated individuals.

The band's narrative positions Niner—their bird emblem—as the force that descends into Trench to disrupt this order. Characters like Clancy and Bandito operate within the city, aiding the band's mission to 'break' Trench from the Nics' hold. Nico, in this context, is less a character with a personal backstory than a facet of the system itself: the quiet, procedural authority that makes rebellion feel impossible until Niner arrives and cracks the structure open.

The Trench storyline, spanning from the 2018 'Trench' album through related music videos and promotional content, uses the Nics as a metaphor for the external pressures—expectations, industry machinery, public scrutiny—that a band must confront and overcome to remain authentic. Nico, like his eight counterparts, is a piece of that pressure made visible and confrontable.

In Their Own Story

The corridors of Trench never fully darkened; they simply dimmed to the exact shade the Nics preferred. Nico sat at his station in the circular chamber, the other eight silhouettes spaced evenly around him like the hours on a clock that no one was allowed to read. Below, in the streets, a child traced a bird in the dust with a stick. Nico noted it in the ledger. The bird was erased by morning. But that morning, a shadow fell over the city that did not belong to any of the nine—a long, sharp shadow with wings wider than the plaza—and the child's dust-drawing was there again, impossibly, as if the erasure had never happened. Nico turned the page. The page was blank. He turned it back. The page was blank. For the first time, the ledger did not record what it was supposed to record, and in the silence of that gap, something in Trench exhaled.

Reader's Guide

Nico is one of the Nine Nics, the ruling antagonists of the Trench narrative introduced with the 2018 album 'Trench.' In the album's central artwork, the Nics appear as a ring of robed, emblem-bearing figures encircling the composition, each representing a facet of the controlling order that holds the city's citizens in stasis. Nico's specific personal symbol and individual visual motif are drawn from this shared iconography, distinguishing him among the nine while reinforcing their collective identity as an inseparable system of authority.

Within the Trench storyline, the Nics function as the oppressive regime that Niner—the band's bird emblem—must confront and break. Characters such as Clancy and Bandito operate inside the city, working to undermine the Nics' grip. Nico, as one of the nine, anchors the 'Trench' album and its associated music-video content (including 'Jumpsuit') as part of the antagonistic framework the narrative is built around.

As a metaphor, the Nics—and Nico among them—represent the external structures of control a band faces: the machinery of expectation, the weight of public narrative, the institutional forces that demand conformity. Nico is not a person with a personal vendetta; he is the quiet, procedural authority that makes the status quo feel permanent. Breaking Trench means breaking the belief that the nine thrones are unmovable, and Nico is the specific seat Niner must look at and say: you are not the whole sky.

Did You Know?

• The Nine Nics are depicted together in the central artwork of the 2018 'Trench' album, arranged in a circular formation that visually reinforces their role as a unified ruling body.
• The Trench narrative positions the band's bird symbol, Niner, as the liberating force against the Nics, framing the band's real-world creative struggle as a story of breaking free from an oppressive system.
• Supporting characters like Clancy and Bandito are woven into the Trench storyline as allies operating within the city, helping to give the narrative a fuller cast beyond the Nics and Niner.
• The Nics are deliberately presented as a collective rather than as individually named villains with separate arcs, emphasizing the theme that the 'enemy' is a system of control rather than a single person.