So begins Did You Ask To Be Set Free?, the third album from metalcore/alt metallers As Everything Unfolds. It’s an understated opener that swiftly opens into the kind of skyscraping chorus they’ve become known for, with an extra shot of emotional vulnerability and intensity than before. There’s a well of grief, pain and sadness that DYATBSF? draws on, one that seeps into every nook and cranny of the album. Instead of ruminating solely on one moment, however, As Everything Unfolds explore a myriad of emotions and moments across the album.
Take opener ‘Denial’, in which vocalist Charlie Rolfe ruminates on the impact of somebody living in denial of the pain they cause others, or ‘Point of View’, in which they delve into a person’s refusal to see anything from another perspective than their own. Grief is non-linear, and DYATBSF? encapsulates that in the way it explores the liminal space people inhabit when in its clutches. After the unimaginable tragedy of drummer Jamie Gowers’ passing, AEU have poured everything they’ve felt since into the album’s creation.
In that liminal space, though, the quartet have crafted something truly unique; it couldn’t be made at any other time, nor will it ever be repeated. The thumping, floor-filling drums of ‘Gasoline’ underpin a surefire festival banger, while final pre-release track ‘Find Another Way’ whose video released mere hours before the album, is a slow burn that seems to ruminate on a person trying to tempt another into their own destruction in heart-rending fashion. Something exceptional about all the pre-release singles, too, is the cohesive world built around the album.
With a visual language inspired by the likes of Donnie Darko, The Matrix, Blade Runner, The Shining and Dracula, Charlie Rolfe weaves these into her lyrics such as with ‘Set In Flow’, told from the perspective of a Replicant grappling with their nature and it being kept from them. All these heady themes would be for naught if the band didn’t back it up with some of the most best and most varied songwriting of their career – which they do. ‘Gasoline’ is all rock club banger, ‘Cut The Lies’ has a swaggering stomp groove to get pits and hips moving and ‘What You Wanted’ is a metalcore rager, one of the album’s heaviest outings with a scorching feature from Bury Tomorrow’s Dani Winter-Bates.
With such variety and careening between styles, there’s still a unified creative vision behind it to ensure they fit together, making nu metal flecked alt metal (‘Set In Flow’) sit easily alongside the tear-stained closing duo ‘Edge of Forever’ and ‘Setting Sun’. The former opening with acoustic guitar and subdued electronic drums, the latter is an expansive, synth-driven lament that crushes beneath its emotional weight. It would’ve been understandable if As Everything Unfolds had decided not to continue on, but instead they’ve poured their hearts and souls into an album that both memorialises Jamie beautifully, as well as being a stunning display of their own creative nous, once more raising the bar for themselves.