Nik Nocturnal is taking a full hiatus from content creation after 11 years, and he’s dropped a new 2000s-inspired metalcore EP as a farewell to fans.
Nik Nocturnal is officially hitting pause.
After more than a decade at the forefront of online metal content, the YouTuber, guitarist, and Twitch personality has announced a full hiatus from all platforms. In a heartfelt farewell video, Nik shared his reasons for stepping away and dropped one final gift for fans: a new metalcore EP steeped in the nostalgic sound of the 2000s.
“I’ve been doing content for 11 years now. And the reason I started making content all the way back then was because I wanted to share music with people,” Nik says in the video. “I wanted to share metal, talk about it. I didn’t really have that growing up.”
His journey has seen him shape a community around breakdowns, skits, and raw guitar work, evolving from a teenage metal fan into one of the scene’s most recognisable voices. But the workload has taken its toll. Nik explained how he’s spent years pushing through personal hardship behind the scenes, prioritising content over processing life’s biggest challenges.
“I have a very unhealthy relationship with content,” he admits. “I’ll go through shit and instead of necessarily dealing with it in that moment, two hours later I’m like, ‘All right, someone that’s close to me passed away. I guess let’s go do the stream or get the YouTube video finished.’”
Nik says he never allowed himself the time to feel things “like a normal human,” and with burnout looming larger than ever, he’s choosing to protect his creativity by stepping back completely.
The EP, featuring a throwback metalcore sound, acts as both a love letter to the genre and a final bow before he takes the space he needs. It arrives after a string of heavy content cycles that had Nik juggling streaming, producing, and managing multiple social channels at once.
“I need to take a second and just figure out my life,” he says, half-laughing, half-serious. “Maybe go outside a bit more.”
In closing, Nik Nocturnal leaves his fans with gratitude and a reminder of what brought them together in the first place. “If you take anything away from this, it’s I hope you guys continue to share music and enjoy that beautiful thing… I hope you guys never forget, because I know I won’t, that we did fun metal things here.”
Nik Nocturnal’s voice may be going quiet for now, but the riffs – and the impact – will echo for a long time to come.
Thanks for all you’ve done for musicians and the community, man. It’s been real, and while we hope to see you back when or if you’re ready, for now take that more than well-earned time away.
Here’s Nik Nocturnal’s full video:
