On an explosive-sounding journey from despair to hope, Sleeping With Sirens find the best version of themselves on their expectation-defeating eighth album
Some bands get to album eight and tread water. Sleeping With Sirens are not one of them. Across 2019’s How It Feels To Be Lost and 2022’s Complete Collapse, they’ve restored the energy that their more pristine mid-2010s output lacked, but it’s now that it feels like that harder edge is flecked with gold. An Ending In Itself is both the culmination of the emotional journey of those last two records and an arrival at a summit they hadn’t reached before – not just in the last half-decade, but potentially across their whole lifespan as a band.
Throughout, they seesaw neatly between their classic sound and flashes of the new. The opening title-track is SWS turned up to full blast – agile riffing, all-consuming emotion – et cetera, with an abrasive twist in its climax that anticipates the heaviness to come elsewhere on the record. The elegant sway of the waltz-like Forever/Always pledges never-ending devotion, while Left On Repeat’s belching riffs thunder beneath some surprising yet slick rap-like delivery from vocalist Kellin Quinn that works far better than it should on paper.
Kellin’s hardly a nonchalant lyricist, but the emotional temperature’s also been turned up to its most affecting levels yet. Process is a heartening exploration of struggle and growth, while Storm Clouds reads like a torn page from a therapist’s notebook. But it’s God In My Head that becomes a proper storm of feeling as Kellin unravels his thoughts on faith, which swells into a turbulent, breath-catching finale. By contrast, Need You Here is perhaps their finest love song to date, gliding into a slow-dance-at-prom bridge with a wink-nudge burst of soloing, with the sweetness of the sentiment pitched perfectly.
Sleeping With Sirens have accomplished something rare in creating what holds up as some of the best music they’ve ever made a decade and a half into the game. Perhaps producer Will Yip (Turnstile, Code Orange, Movements) – who’s consistently brilliant at helming rawer, rougher rock records - mined some as-yet-untapped potential. Perhaps it was the fact they took their time making it. Whatever the formula is, sticking to it will firmly have them back on top.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Pierce The Veil, Silverstein, Holding Absence
An Ending In Itself is released June 12 via Rise
