You would have expected Courtney LaPlante to have long ago accepted that life is an unpredictable ride. 

If a lifetime spent in the ever-unstable vocation of fronting bands wasn’t enough of a schooling, then the six years between launching the first music under the banner of Spiritbox and today, where the band stand as the most talked-about and remarkable breakout story in 21st century metal, should have underlined the fact. But as with the music that she and husband-come-bandmate Michael Stringer have sweated over for the past half-decade, surprises are always a mere stone’s throw away.

Take, for example, the five-day stretch in early November 2023, as LaPlante and Stringer settled in to some downtime following an intensive year of touring the globe, both stealing the show at arena-level support shows and blowing the roof off the venues housing almost unthinkably big debut headline performances. The release of their ‘The Fear Of Fear’ EP, a six-track body of work the ambition and scope of which belies its meagre track listing, would have been enough to keep their name firmly on the watching world’s lips. But then came the surprise call from hip-hop superstar Megan Thee Stallion to collaborate on a rock reimagining of her smash hit single ‘Cobra’, rapidly released to mainstream acclaim. Topping that, notification was the next day duly received from the Recording Academy that, alongside luminaries Metallica, Slipknot, Disturbed and Ghost, Spiritbox’s name would be included on the nominees list for Best Metal Performance at the 2024 GRAMMYs.

A week to exemplify the dizzying ride that has been the Spiritbox story. A week to turn their world on its head once again.

None of this, of course, was in LaPlante or Stringer’s sights when the blueprint for Spiritbox was taking shape as 2016 bled into 2017. Then, the duo were merely looking for a vehicle in which to channel their vision for music that interlaced the extremities of technical, heavy music with an atmospheric, ethereal touch. A succession of singles and a self-titled EP broke ground; 2020’s break-out smash ‘Holy Roller’ poured gasoline on the band’s fledgling flame. By the time of releasing debut album ‘Eternal Blue’ in the Fall of 2021, the word-of-mouth hype that had built around Spiritbox was such as to see them deigned “metal’s hottest band” by Billboard, amongst a litany of global press acclaim including front cover appearances on Metal Hammer, Revolver, Alternative Press, Rock Sound, and Kerrang!, who even months ahead of ‘Eternal Blue’’s release had labelled them “the hottest band in the world”.

Fulfilling such expectations, LaPlante admits today, felt impossible. That Spiritbox – completed today by drummer Zev Rose and bassist Josh Gilbert – would surpass them speaks to both the unwavering resolve and uncompromised creative vision that has fueled the band since it was merely the nucleus of an idea discussed around LaPlante and Stringer’s kitchen table. 

“Being nominated for a GRAMMY is really special for me, and no one can ever take that away, but it’s confirmation, not validation to me,” LaPlante says, recalling a quote that has long stuck with her, while reflecting on the journey through the prism of recent events. “I’ve never done anything musically for validation, but it confirms the reasons why you believe in yourself deep down, and why you put yourself out there.”

LaPlante is used to doing such, of course, with Spiritbox serving as a vehicle for the vocalist to lay bare her innermost thoughts and feelings, particularly when it comes to her lifelong mental health struggles – ‘Eternal Blue’ a name befitting of the debut album’s emotional weight. Such vulnerability, interwoven with Stringer’s heavy, bruising soundscapes, has earned plaudits and an ever-swelling legion of worldwide fans – referred to lovingly as ‘Boxies’ – the devotion of whom elevated ‘Eternal Blue’ to #13 on the Billboard 200 chart, and has been the catalyst to the clocking of some 450 million streams to date.

Following in said album’s footsteps, ‘The Fear Of Fear’ stands similarly naked. Created as a concept EP in both sonics and thematics, though comprising six distinctly individual tracks it is at its most impactful when consumed as it was originally envisaged: as one singular piece of music, a “loop”, as LaPlante suggests, without a beginning or end, a structural reflection of its spiritual journey. Following an unnamed narrator, ‘The Fear Of Fear’ presents a story of multiple timelines and alternate universes, through which its central figure confronts life, death and rebirth, a foreboding sense of deja vu conjured up through haunting sonic motifs and a body of lyrics that are at junctures repeated and reversed, reflected and refracted. 

“I feel very often like I can’t change the things about myself and my situation that I don’t like,” LaPlante offers of what these songs mean to her. “When you think you’ve maybe changed and evolved as a person, you realise that you’re on the same path you always were, like this is a ride you cannot get off. You come to think that you can only carry the knowledge of this lifetime over into the next. The EP’s narrator is always trying to escape this, to crack the code and close the loop, but they can’t. It is the expression of my frustrations with feeling that I’m doomed to fail, and repeat the same mistakes that I’m ashamed of over and over.”

A work of impactful immediacy, ‘The Fear Of Fear’ rewards considered evaluation with spiralling secrets hidden beneath its surface. Released upon a world of diminished attention spans and disposable culture, it is another deliberately and thrillingly confounding move from a band that delights in shattering expectations – for further evidence, take 2022’s adventurous three-track ‘Rotoscope’ EP, which owed as much to ‘90s industrial and alternative influences as it did the band’s metalcore roots. Where lesser creatives would use their breakout success as a blueprint to simply rinse and repeat, Spiritbox instead boldly refuses to stand still and stagnate.

“We don’t have to have an identity, where everything we release is going to sound a particular way,” LaPlante nods of the creative learnings taken from the band’s ascent. “We never question where we’re going, and Michael and I never question each other. I feel like we have a moral compass that is guiding what we create. I cannot live without any of the songs we put out. They’re my children; they feel so integral to me as a person. It’s pure selfishness, challenging ourselves and doing what we want. But I think that’s cool. That’s why you should make music. And I think that will keep us on the right path.

 “‘The Fear Of Fear’ feels like a chapter closing,” the vocalist adds. “Something feels different about this time. We feel a transition…” 

All of which means that, for a band in perpetual forward motion, what is to come next in their evolution remains limitless in its possibility and thrillingly unknown in its destination. One thing is for sure, however: the heavy music world will be watching and waiting with greater anticipation than ever.