Canadian quartet Spiritbox are navigating a transition from online-born experimenters to arena-fillers as they prepare for a December return to Australia, guitarist Mike Stringer told us from a Frankfurt hotel room during the band’s arena tour across Europe.
From Bedroom Moshers to Arena Heads in Frankfurt and Beyond
Emerging in 2017 from the remnants of mathcore outfit iwrestledabearonce, Mike Stringer and vocalist Courtney LaPlante founded the project, which existed as a mostly online entity for its first couple of years. Pandemic lockdowns acted as a structural circuit breaker for the genre and the band alike. In June 2020, isolation birthed the chart-topping single “Holy Roller,” setting the stage for their 2021 debut LP, Eternal Blue.
Mike Stringer 🖤🥹 pic.twitter.com/yY9T3Yunaj
Stringer noted the intense psychological toll that accompanied the rapid ascent of their debut. “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,” Stringer told us. “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.”
The Tsunami Sea Pivot and the Six-String Reversal
That polar opposite materialized as 2025’s Tsunami Sea, an uglier and heavier endeavour engineered for stadium scales alongside contemporaries like Bring Me The Horizon, Linkin Park, and Limp Bizkit. “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.
Constant output characterized the intervening years, including the Rotoscope EP in 2022, The Fear of Fear EP in 2023, and high-profile features such as a rock remix of Megan Thee Stallion’s “Cobra.” September brought the standalone radio-ready rock single “Mourning,” which showcased a pivot away from extended-range instrumentation back to traditional configurations.
“That’s a brand new one – it was just a song we felt really compelled to do,” Stringer explained, noting his return to conventional gear. “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!’”
Stringer described the track as a thematic counterbalance to their previous release. “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.”
Good Things Festival Logistics and Digital Rig Architecture
Australian audiences will catch the band for the first time since their 2023 Knotfest appearances when Spiritbox performs at the Good Things Festival this December, playing Melbourne on Friday, 4 December, Sydney on Saturday, 5 December, and Brisbane on Sunday, 6 December.
“To come back on this scale and to be playing these slots, it’s really surreal,” Stringer stated regarding their festival placement. High international freight costs forced a streamlined touring setup compared to past iterations.
“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,” Stringer said. “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.”
