Album review: As Everything Unfolds – DID YOU ASK TO BE SET FREE?

As Everything Unfolds have just chronicled the most painful chapter of their lives. The devastation following the death of drummer Jamie Gowers in August 2024 was always bound to filter into their music – particularly when vocalist Charlie Rolfe was grieving the loss of someone who was both her bandmate and her partner. As such, their third album DID YOU ASK TO BE SET FREE? represents a blunt-force purging of emotion, but the pain they express is a prism of complex thoughts, feelings and experiences that might not necessarily be all tied to a singular event. Regardless of the biography, the band have harnessed it all for powerful means.

Along the way, they’re navigating a sea of confusion, anger and sorrow. Opener DENIAL’s portrait someone blind to their own emotional destructiveness practically burns with anguish, particularly through Charlie’s screams of, ‘I know you enjoy watching me bleed / In your self-destructive misery.’ Amid the swerving melodies of POINT OF VIEW, they deepen that sentiment to explore the feelings of the bystanders whose perspective gets thrown aside as someone they love gets absorbed into their own suffering.

CUT THE LIES, meanwhile, channels the frustration of betrayal into a fizzing four-to-the-floor banger unlike anything AEU has ever attempted before, while WHAT YOU WANTED’s chainsaw riffing from the school of Spiritbox is matched in heaviness by a razor-throated guest turn from Bury Tomorrow’s Dani Winter-Bates.

The strongest facet of this record is the vivid rawness of its lyrics, combined with the most emotive vocal performances Charlie has ever done. If the gravity-defying high notes of GASOLINE’s chorus didn’t make your throat sting with emotion, the near-spoken word middle eight will, as she declares, ‘Saying goodbye is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.’ The atmospheric synth-flecked balladry of FIND ANOTHER WAY is an even tougher listen, even just from the mournful strain in Charlie’s voice as she sings, ‘Wake up deluded with your voice in my head.’

Even with all this, it's only a fraction of the pain As Everything Unfolds have endured. What is clear is how urgently they had to express it. They have done so beautifully. In getting this deeply vulnerable, they have crafted a release that lingers like a shadow long after the music stops.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Holding Absence, Dayseeker, RØRY

DID YOU ASK TO BE SET FREE? is released on April 10 via Century Media.