Mike Stringer of Spiritbox
The band Spiritbox has transitioned from an online-only project to an arena-filling metalcore act, a shift accelerated by the pandemic. Guitarist Mike Stringer reflects on the band's rapid rise and the intense pressure of their debut album, Eternal Blue.
Why it matters
The story highlights how modern music artists leverage digital platforms and changing genre trends to achieve rapid commercial success in the post-pandemic era.
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.
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.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in