The first single that came about was “Holy Roller.” To us it was just kind of a palate cleanser on the record, and it was something that we could put out with a visual to keep the name going.
It took us about a year and a half to get it fully complete, and as that was happening the pandemic hit and we didn’t want to lose momentum. MS: It took like nine to ten months to have the whole thing go through, but during that time of releasing music we started writing for Eternal Blue. The plan was to do one music video a month which obviously got dragged out because that’s so hard to do.ĬL: We’re so dumb for thinking that we could have made our own music videos and pay for them, and then make one once a month. MS: I definitely say that it was with the pandemic, because initially we had that strategy with the singles collection which was the five songs that we spread out. Were longterm single releases the original plan for the band, or did that plan take shape because of the pandemic? Instead you all focused on marketing your singles. One thing very striking about Spiritbox is the fact you didn’t get that normal trajectory, specifically with the typical album-tour cycle. It’s really intimidating but we’re also getting to see and learn from other people we look up to as well. We have the opportunity to study their process and see that first hand, so it’s a double edged sword. The downside is we’re pretty intimidated when we walk out there sometimes, the upside is that because we’re getting all of these opportunities we’re getting to play with all of these amazing legendary bands. Normally we would’ve had a normal trajectory had the world not shut down, but I’m trying to learn confidence as quickly as I can.
Now with over 120,867,793 streams under their belt, 2022 will be the start of the band’s next and very important phase, full force touring.ĬL: I don’t mean to speak for everyone but for me at least, my confidence is like ‘fake.’ It’s like fake it to you make it, I have to protect myself and have this confidence that I haven’t established organically yet by slowly building up. That in of itself is a feat few metal bands have managed to do, let alone at the start of their career. The band’s founding members guitarist Mike Stringer and vocalist Courtney LaPlante (who are also a married couple) have seemingly crafted an organic modern metal sound, one that can speaks to corners of both heavy and popular music genres. Showcasing a tightly intertwined visual and sonic package was one of the key elements in building this momentum, but the music simply spoke for itself. By doing so the band took to the internet by storm and have since raked in tens of millions of views on youtube alone.
In a way to differentiate themself and also inspire a demand, at the start of 2020 Spiritbox began to slowly drip out singles, all while the world was shutdown and concerts were an alien concept. That being said, there’s far more to Spiritbox than meets the eye, specifically in their marketing strategies and sonic appeal, which have both helped to establish them as this year’s most exciting new band.įor some time now, many bands in the heavy music community seemed to have lost the art of creating a brand, and more importantly a demand for their brand.
Taking it even one step, the band hadn’t properly toured at all in anticipation for this release. For any rock band, more so metal band, charting this high with a debut is quite literally unheard of, especially in today’s music climate. At a point where they’d not played more than ten shows as a band, Spiritbox’s debut record Eternal Blue charted at No. However, in the case of the Canadian metal outfit Spiritbox, there’s been a new awakening both sonically and marketing wise in the rock industry. For almost two years now, bands and artists alike haven’t been able to properly reestablish the album-tour cycle, as shows and release schedules have been thrown off course time and time again. The pandemic has easily changed the inner workings of the music industry, particularly when it comes to launching a new band. Spiritbox band members left to right: Bill Crook (bass), Courtney LaPlant (vocals), Mike Stringer.