Ahead of their Good Things Festival return, Mike Stringer reflects on the band’s rapid rise and why six strings still feel fresh.
A lot of people used the pandemic lockdowns to reset their lives; whether it was a career change, focusing on fitness, or expanding a skill set, the forced lockdowns at the start of the decade acted for some people as a circuit breaker of sorts.
For the genre of Metalcore, that circuit breaker was a crop of new and established artists taking things stadium-sized.
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By the 2010s, the style was bogged down in a tried, tested, and tired formula of verse-breakdown-chorus-breakdown; the 20s saw the emergence of a wave of new metalcore that was leaner, chorus-driven, and more willing to lean on poppier sensibilities.
Canadian-based quartet Spiritbox were at the forefront of this exciting new wave; emerging from the ashes of mathcore weirdos iwrestledabearonce, husband and wife duo Mike Stringer (guitar) and Courtney LaPlante (vocals) founded the project in 2017.
For its first couple of years, the band existed as a mostly online entity; however, as momentum was building, lockdowns struck. It was from the depths of isolation in June 2020 that the band released the chart-topping single “Holy Roller”, and the subsequent downtime allowed it to assemble the final pieces for debut LP Eternal Blue, released in 2021 and hailed as a modern classic.
In less than half a decade, Spiritbox had gone from semi-viral bedroom moshers to arena-fillers – changing the lives of its four members beyond recognition.
“We’re in a place of reflection now,” says Stringer, speaking to us from a hotel room in Frankfurt in the middle of the band’s arena tour across Europe.
“I had a lot of material for (first album) Eternal Blue – I had years to bank a lot of stuff – but because of that, my relationship with that album was almost too intense because it was just our lives for years.”
“When it came out, not only was there this online machine hyping the record so much when we didn’t even have the proper capacity to go and do it live, which then led to all this expectation and stress and pressure… I was obviously very fulfilled and relieved that the record went the way that it did, but I decided I wanted to then do the polar opposite.”
That ‘opposite’ was follow-up album Tsunami Sea (2025), an uglier and heavier endeavour which still somehow managed to sound tailor-made for stadiums, in keeping with Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and Bring Me The Horizon.
“Doing that album really scared me ’cause like… every band’s second album, especially if you do have a big debut, is so important,” Stringer said.
“Ultimately it came down to trusting our gut and deciding ‘we need to put out something cathartic and something for ourselves’, and if people identify with it and they can hear where we’re coming from with it, and especially if they can see a part of themselves in it, then mission accomplished.”
In keeping with the modern trend of constant content, since first emerging with Holy Roller, there’s never been a defined period of silence for Spiritbox.
After Eternal Blue came the Rotoscope EP (2022), followed by The Fear of Fear EP (2023).
With the addition of a scattering of feature appearances on singles – including a ‘rock remix’ of Megan Thee Stallion’s “Cobra” – the Spiritbox machine appears to constantly be churning out material.
The latest offering was the September standalone single “Mourning”, a radio-ready rock anthem showcasing their melodic side. However, there’s no indication (yet) that the song is the first fruits of a new body of work.
“That’s a brand new one – it was just a song we felt really compelled to do,” Stringer said, adding that the song reminded him of the reliability of a good old six-string guitar.
“ I’ve been playing within the same sort of like range and using the same seven-string instrumentation, and it just dawned on me after I was messing around that ‘Oh, actually six strings are cool, and Drop C# is cool!’”
“There’s a reason why when I was a kid I used to love all this stuff; it was really born from wanting to move everything in a new direction, but not really knowing where that’s gonna go.”
“That’s the beauty of the band existing for so long… we only put out stuff that we’re compelled to put out. It’s not anything that’s a master plan. There’s no strategy. For me, it was always stuck in my head, and Courtney really wanted to move forward with it because she wanted to write something about it.”
“I hate to overuse this, but because Tsunami Sea was so just angry and pissed off on many, many levels, I feel like “Mourning” is kind of the answer to that… it’s extremely heavy, but in an accepting kind of way.”
“It’s kind of where we’re at with our mindsets right now.”
Australian fans will get their first chance to see Spiritbox since 2023 when they arrive down under in December as part of the stacked Good Things Festival.
When they first toured here with Knotfest in 2023, they were a buzz band in the scene; now, they’ll return as leaders of the new(est) wave of metal taking the world by storm.
‘“To come back on this scale and to be playing these slots, it’s really surreal,” Stringer said.
“We’ve just always, always wanted to come back, but it’s unfortunately not made sense in the last little while until this came about.”
“We’re absolutely over the moon about it, ’cause like, what a way to come back!”
“The only hard thing is freight costs; I would normally be showing up with a full set up of four guitar amp rigs and cabs and pedals… but I think we’re gonna do something a little more conservative, and I’m gonna tone-match everything that I have.”
“I’ll have all the tones digitally dialled within my Fractal, and I’m still gonna have a smaller board, because I need it to play a couple of our songs like “Soft Spine” – if I don’t have the [Earthquaker Devices] Rainbow Machine pedal I physically can’t play that song.”
“It’s gonna be a little more conservative, but it will sound like our usual selves thankfully.”
Spiritbox play Good Things Festival in Melbourne on Friday, 4 December, Sydney on Saturday, 5 December and Brisbane on Sunday, 6 December.
