Four years on from 2022’s Complete Collapse, Sleeping With Sirens are back with new album An Ending In Itself. Promising that it’s very much been worth the wait, vocalist Kellin Quinn talks doing what SWS do best, why he’ll always push forward no matter what, and the surprising importance of journaling…
When asked what Sleeping With Sirens is in 2026, Kellin Quinn’s answer is automatic.
“I know what we’re not,” he says, “and that is a nu-metal band!”
In all seriousness, the frontman knows that fans connect with their music most when they have a firm hold on their roots: open-hearted emotion that bleeds onto the page, chunky riffs, choruses that could touch the outer layers of the atmosphere.
“It’s what we gravitate towards,” Kellin affirms.
It’s been valuable for the band – completed by bassist Justin Hills, rhythm guitarist Nick Martin, drummer Matty Best and lead guitarist Tony Pizzuti – to delineate between what they are and what they aren’t. After the shinier, slicker pop experiment of 2017’s Gossip divided their fanbase, SWS turned the car around for the grittier How It Feels To Be Lost. It was an act of rediscovery as well as catharsis, which invariably shaped their future path on thundering follow-up Complete Collapse and now, their new album An Ending In Itself.
There’s no mould for what a band’s eighth LP should sound like – not when so many never make it that far. Still, despite their longevity, Kellin knows that some things never change, least of all the urge to prove themselves, or the friction that comes with striving to best himself all over again.
“Probably since [2013’s] Feel, I've literally dreaded going in and making an album,” he admits, catching up with Kerrang! on a sunny morning just two days before his 40th birthday (he’s celebrating with some tacos, if you’re wondering). “I always think I’m never gonna be able to write anything good again, but once you have three or four songs that you really like, and you get into five, you get into a rhythm of making songs. Once you have the cornerstones – the upbeat, super energetic one, the cool, ballad-y one, you can start filling in. It’s like you got to draw the outline and then start painting on the inside.”
The relief of completing a task doesn’t fade, either.
“I get so excited when we’re done with an album and we turn it in!”
It’s been four years since your last record, the longest gap yet. What was behind that? Were you hoping to take more time with this album, or were there other things in life that took priority?
“We were playing a lot of shows off the last album, and we just wanted to take our time on this one. For us, getting in a room together and writing as a whole group of musicians was important. We have a new guitar player [Tony Pizzuti] that’s never written on a record before, so it was important for us to all figure out what this new era of Sleeping With Sirens is.
“A lot of people go in and make records in a couple of weeks nowadays, but for us, what’s worked best is writing songs and taking them home and seeing if we still like them within a couple weeks or a month of listening. There was a lot of demoing, a lot of rewrites. It took a little bit longer than expected but I’m not mad at that. I think the quality is a lot better because of it.”
You’ve said An Ending In Itself is both a continuation and conclusion to the emotional arc of your two previous albums. They have plenty of common ground sonically, but how else are they connected in your mind?
“How It Feels To Be Lost came off a really tumultuous time in my life where I was really struggling mentally, and that record really was just an honest diary of sorts. Complete Collapse was fresh out of COVID so it was just a weird time. Then this record is, I think, probably the light at the end of all the hardships. It’s about finding hope within the darkness that was the last few years.
“Something that I’ve learned a lot in my life and over the years is that when you’re going through hard times eventually you make it out of it. Sometimes it feels like you’re never going to, but you always do, as long as you keep pushing forward and hold on to the hope.”
Your new song Forever/Always is out today and has a classic, big, emotional Sleeping With Sirens vibe. What’s the story behind how it was created?
“My family and I were planning on moving to Michigan, and then we ended up coming back to Oregon, where I live now, because the family was going through some health issues. My daughter had a pretty rough go and was in the hospital, and then my wife had a really rough go and was in and out of the hospital. It’s a song about standing by and just being there as an anchor as much as I could for my family. I’m sure a lot of people have that specific person that they can call when things aren’t good, who they can be their absolute honest self with. To me, it’s about having that person that you know is your anchor in your life and letting them know that you’re always going to be there for them.”
These songs, produced by Will Yip, have a rougher, rawer feel to them production-wise – why was that a direction you wanted to go down?
“The last couple records we’ve made are very specific in the way they sound. A lot of bands have that specific sound because they go to those producers that make those sounds, and they’re great. This time around, it was time to strip back to, ‘What do we do as a band? What does our band sound like in a room? What do we sound like with real drums and real amps?’
“With Will, if you go into a room and the vibe of the song is working and everyone’s laughing and having a good time, then that’s the song. That was very important for us this time around. It took a lot of effort and it took a lot of time, but the end result is an album that we’re very, very proud of.”
We caught up with you last year with your side-project Haunted Mouths, which was very different from the SWS sound. Despite the contrast, is there anything you learned from that experience that’s informed how you create now?
“That was an absolute pleasure to make. It was so fun and so easy – not that this one wasn’t, but the one thing that’s tough about Sleeping With Sirens is that you’re in the box of Sleeping With Sirens, and there’s an expectation for it to sound a certain way. When you do a side-project, you can be more free with what you want to write.
“I think that’s what that album led me into with this one: to approach it in the same way, take myself out of that box for a second and think about what I really want to do creatively. Also, it taught me that it’s really important to go into a writing project with as many lyrics as you can have written, whether you use them or not. Both those albums, I filled a journal full of random thoughts, and whether I used a sentence or one word or an idea, it helps to get things going.
“I advocate for that, for anybody that wants to write music and is reading or listening to this, just fill a notebook full of random thoughts and ideas. You never know when you’re going to use them!”
An Ending In Itself is due out on June 12 via Rise Records – pre-order your copy on limited-edition vinyl with a hand-signed art card now.
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