The waters never seem to calm for Spiritbox. The Victoria, BC-founded group are one of the fastest-rising acts in modern metal, with their second Grammy nomination this year and their widely-anticipated second album, Tsunami Sea, due out March 7. But when vocalist Courtney LaPlante and guitarist Mike Stringer join Exclaim! on a Zoom call, they're preoccupied with matters a little closer to home.
Amid the wildfires raging through the Los Angeles area, Spiritbox bassist Josh Gilbert is among the many who have lost their homes. Gilbert shared the news in January via an Instagram post, in which he wrote that he and his wife Stephanie "have had to process what we lost. Our entire neighborhood of Altadena. Our house on Wapello St. Our car. Family photos. All the keepsakes we've accumulated together since we got married in 2013."
LaPlante and Stringer also had to evacuate their housee in Los Angeles with their dog for a few days, but are at home again and doing everything they can to support their bandmate. "[The Gilberts] weren't in town, so they didn't even get to save anything — not one piece of memory or anything," LaPlante says. "Their whole house is gone — everything."
The Gilberts had hired a catsitter while they were away, who saved the couple's two cats from the house before it burned down. The family is together and safe once again. After the loss of Gilbert's home, the band launched a raffle to raise funds for local charities. "We've just been focused on how to help [Gilbert] and donating a bunch of things to donation centres and just trying to get through it," says Stringer.
It's the latest twist in a career that has long been characterized by the unexpected. Stringer and LaPlante formed Spiritbox in 2016 after the now-married couple left iwrestledabearonce, a metalcore group in which they were both replacement members. When they began to gain traction with their own project, it came as a surprise to the band, since pandemic restrictions meant they still hadn't done much touring by the time their 2021 debut album, Eternal Blue, came out. After being catapulted into high demand, the pressure to craft a worthy follow-up LP was immense.
"It was just very overwhelming," Stringer admits. "To look at that and then now look at us a few years later, we knew that we had to deliver and we had to make something that, for ourselves, really surpassed that."
They were keen to avoid the sophomore slump — the phenomenon when a breakthrough band or artist's second album fails to live up to the standards set by their debut, resulting in dwindling popularity and wasted potential. "It actually was very stressful," says Stringer. "A lot of mental anguish was happening during the whole process."
For LaPlante, nobody else's expectations stack up to her own: "We're very hard on ourselves and put so much pressure on ourselves that outside pressure takes a backseat to our own self-critique," she says. "But it certainly didn't change the way we write music, in my opinion."
Releasing their EP The Fear of Fear in 2023 to tide over hungry fans, Spiritbox took their time crafting their second full-length record, penning around 30 songs and picking out the strongest ones; 11 made the cut. "On one hand, it was very stressful, but on the other, it was very welcoming, because it actually gave us enough time to be extremely picky and write as much as humanly possible," says Stringer.
Tsunami Sea masterfully toes the line between conceptual and grounded, the songs fitting together seamlessly, yet each also standing on its own, giving the sense that any track would be a worthy single. Between Stringer and producer Daniel Braunstein's atmospheric soundscaping, Zev Rose's blistering yet technical drumming, LaPlante's operatic cleans and visceral screams, and Stringer's frenetic but controlled and expertly crafted guitar parts, the songs are tied together by immersive imagery.
Stringer credits the album's themes to LaPlante: "As far as all of it flowing, and still feeling individual but connected, a lot of that comes down to Courtney's lyrical content," he explains. "Once we got the theme of the record, with it being so tied to Vancouver Island, with it being so tied to nature and the overall feel of home, it was really awesome to be able to go through and place in a lot of sound design that was focused on the ocean, waves, storms and rain — I think a lot of that really glues it together."
The sonic variety is all over Tsunami Sea. "Sometimes the influences aren't what a lot of people would think it means when we say the word 'influences'; a lot of it is a lot more subtle," says LaPlante. "There's so much cool stuff out there that people are making that really inspires us, even if it's five seconds of a production piece in a hyperpop song we heard. Those things can really impact you and inform what you're making."
As the tides of modern metal turn toward more acceptance and even celebration of pop, it's not a jab at Spiritbox to say that Tsunami Sea is something of a sheep in wolf's clothing — for a seismically heavy album, it's about as pop-friendly as they come. But that much should be expected for a band that has twice collaborated with Megan Thee Stallion. "That was a whole whirlwind — that was absolutely insane," says Stringer. "Both times were equally as crazy." LaPlante and Stringer profess to be huge fans in unison.
It started with a rumour that Megan Thee Stallion wanted a metal-leaning remix of her 2023 single "Cobra." Immediately after accepting the gig, Spiritbox found themselves under a 48-hour deadline, a timeframe in which LaPlante says the "booked and busy" rapper "probably went to four different countries." Stringer and LaPlante arranged and recorded their parts in one day, and had them approved on their way home from the studio that night. "That was on a Monday, and it was out that Wednesday," says Stringer.
The tight turnaround didn't allow for perfectionism, but both Stringer and LaPlante recognize how quickly things move in the pop music world, and understood that they had to trust their gut for the sake of timeliness and novelty — lest someone else swoop in and steal the moment.
"It's her song and ultimately it's her vision, so we're just there to do whatever she sees to be the best move," Stringer continues. "I will say that she is very on it as a producer, and she really had a lot of interesting critique and she really shaped a lot of that with her feedback." Spiritbox again teamed up with Megan Thee Stallion on her 2024 track "TYG."
It's one thing to be respected in the realm of heavy music, but Spiritbox are already breaking into the mainstream in a way relatively few metal bands have. They were nominated in each of the past two years for the Grammys' Best Metal Performance category, for their songs "Jaded" and "Cellar Door," respectively. In the male-dominated genre, a Spiritbox victory would be historic.
"I would love for a woman to win, whether it's myself or someone else," LaPlante says. "It's always bothered me because that award has been around since the year I was born, and it pisses me off that we're going into our 36th year without one."
Speaking a few weeks ahead of the February 2 ceremony, LaPlante and Stringer accurately put their money on Gojira's "Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!)" winning the category this year. "They played the biggest stage that a metal band has ever achieved," says LaPlante, referencing the group's performance at the opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. "I feel like that's the craziest, greatest moment in the history of metal music."
The lone metal Grammy tends to favour legacy acts, making it difficult for new nominees like Spiritbox to win. Their last defeat came at the hands of Metallica. "Maybe the first woman to win will be one of the opera singers on the Gojira song," says LaPlante. "Or maybe Knocked Loose and Poppy."
Playing with some of the biggest names in heavy music — including Gojira, who supported Korn on their summer 2024 trek alongside Spiritbox — presented a whole new challenge for Spiritbox.
"We're self-aware enough to know that people are there to see Korn and Gojira, so we just want to make the biggest impact we can," says LaPlante, noting that shorter sets mean less time for interludes and banter. "There's nothing for us to showcase who we are other than our music, because we're going out there without any production and playing in the daylight, so we have to really stand behind our music. Doing headliners is so different, because you have the time to prepare, the budget to prepare, and the luxury of being able to showcase your creativity and connect with your fans, and your goal there is to immerse them in the show and make them forget they're in a random, giant hall."
It's strange for Spiritbox to reflect on their success. With Grammy nods, massive tours and global festival spots, it can be hard to stay afloat in the rapids of stardom. "I don't really believe it until I see it," says Stringer. "All of these plans, I try to not think on it too hard in the moment when we're planning or announcing stuff. If I were to fixate on it, I don't think I'd get any sleep, because it's way too much and it's very stressful, to be honest."
In part, this is due to the fact that Spiritbox's initial ascent happened online during the pandemic. "Being a band that started gaining momentum and people started caring about during a time where everyone was just on their laptops, it really gives you a false sense of how things actually are and just makes things seem super fake to you, in a sense, because none of that is really real — it's just view counts and numbers on a screen," Stringer adds. "We weren't able to go and play, and we weren't able to really connect with our audience, and we weren't really able to meet people for such a long time, and I feel like that's kind of done something to me."
Spiritbox have battled the currents as long as they've been a band. Even now, despite the recent personal setback for Gilbert, the group's 2025 tours will be continuing as planned, including spring shows in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
"We just want to do whatever [Gilbert] wants to do, and he wants to keep going; he wants to rehearse for the tour, he wants to do music videos, he wants to go on this tour," says LaPlante. "I think he needs normalcy and something positive to do. We're so grateful to him that he still wants to do all this with us, and we're here to support him no matter what he wants to do."
In desperate times, Spiritbox stay focused on what's to come.
"So many people were impacted here and it's awful," LaPlante adds. "I've never had a friend that's gone through this much adversity before. It's so horrible. We're trying to remember that, in the future we'll all be grateful that we all prepared for future things together right now and didn't just spiral out of control."