Music / Spiritbox

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Spiritbox is a Canadian Heavy Metal band from Victoria, British Columbia, founded in 2017 by husband-and-wife duo Mike Stringer and Courtney LaPlante. The band's musical style is eclectic and difficult to pigeonhole, and displays a variety of influences from within the heavy metal genre (mostly Progressive Metal, Groove Metal, Nu Metal, Metalcore and post-metal) as well as electronic, R&B, and pop influences that create an accessible yet technically impressive style.

LaPlante and Stringer were formerly members of the Avant-Garde Metal band Iwrestledabearonce, and have been considering starting a side project as early as 2011. In late 2015, they left, citing a desire to pursue a more personal and creative direction, and began producing demo recordings in their spare time. The two got married in 2016, and shortly after, began investing their time and money into jointly recording material, and in 2017, they announced the launch of Spiritbox as a musical project, releasing a self-titled EP that same year.

The duo would be joined in 2018 by bassist Bill Crook (of Living With Lions fame) and drummer Ryan Loerke, who left in 2020 and was replaced by Zev Rosenberg (stage name Zev Rose), who is twelve years younger than LaPlante. Jason Mageau, who managed Iwrestledabearonce, would return to help LaPlante and Stringer in releasing the band's music through the Pale Chord label (later partnered with Rise Records in 2020), and promoting the band via online means instead of music tours, allowing the band to establish a fanbase with younger, more tech-savvy metalheads.

On September 17, 2021, the band released their highly anticipated debut album, Eternal Blue, to critical acclaim.

Current Lineup:

• Courtney LaPlante – vocals (2016–present)
• Mike Stringer – guitar (2016–present)
• Zev Rose - drums (2020-present, previously a touring member from 2018-2020)
• Josh Gilbert - bass, backing vocals (2023-present, previously a touring member from 2022-2023)

Past Members:

• Mikey Montgomery - drums (2017, session only)
• Ryan Loerke - drums (2018-2020)
• Bill Crook - bass (2018-2022; died in 2024)

Discography:

• Spiritbox (2017)
• Singles Collection (2019)
• Eternal Blue (2021)
• Rotoscope (2022)
• The Fear of Fear (2023)
• Tsunami Sea (2025)

Curse the tropes down, and when I die you won't pray for me:

• All Drummers Are Animals: Averted with Zev Rose - his drumming style is calm and highly focused, showing little emotion even as he pulls off complex drum patterns.
• Avant-Garde Metal: One of the most respected new bands in the genre as of late. They are known for not only their innovative style that bridges the gap between technical and accessible, but also for embracing emerging music technologies such as digital synthesizers for production, and online distribution/streaming services to promote their music.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: Courtney may very well be the Trope Codifier for this in modern metal. While her screaming is incredibly aggressive, her clean vocals are often described as being some of the most beautiful in the genre.
• Bookends: The first lyric on the first song and final lyric on the final song on Rotoscope is "shadows".
• Call-Back / Call-Forward: The Fear of Fear has quite a few of these.
• Careful with That Axe: They love doing this on their more melodic songs.
  • "Holy Roller" opens with LaPlante's strident Harsh Vocals cutting through a mumbled spoken word passage.
  • The end of "Halcyon".
  • The end of "Hysteria". Dear god.
  • "A Haven With Two Faces" is initially a very melodic progressive metal track... until around 3:21, when her voice breaks into a visceral scream.
  • "Ride The Wave" is a very melodic, Depeche Mode-inspired track... until an ultra-low tuned breakdown starts, led by a banshee scream from Courtney.
• Concept Album: The Fear of Fear is a concept EP. All the songs have a story arc that links them together, and they all flow into each other.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • The Fear of Fear. Two of the band's heaviest songs ("Cellar Door" and "Angel Eyes") are on this EP, and the ambient textures are generally creepier-sounding than on previous records.
  • Tsunami Sea. The band returned to its old black-and-white aesthetic for this album, and it has several of the band's heaviest songs ("Black Rainbow", "Soft Spine" and "No Loss, No Love") on it.
• Electronic Music: A key element of the band's sound. Their use of digital synthesizers and programmed drums is a deliberate choice to better embrace the artistic use of new musical technologies.
• Epic Rocking: Almost entirely averted. Even in their proggier early days, they tended not to write long songs. The closest they've come to that is "The Mara Effect", a suite of three separate songs on the Spiritbox EP that flow into each other. They once performed the entire "The Mara Effect" suite in one go, and it added up to 16:30.
• Genre-Busting: Spiritbox's style is difficult to pigeonhole and continues to elude description. Alternative Metal, Djent, Metalcore, Nu Metal, post-metal, and Progressive Metal blur together with Electronic Music, R&B, and pop music to the point of sounding highly abstract yet accessible for the average listener.
• Groove Metal: Of the modern, djenty variety. The band has cited Tesseract, Gojira, and Deftones as influences to their style.
• I Am the Band: Spiritbox was originally a studio project by Courtney and Mike. The band creatively still very much operates like this, even with the addition of other full-time members.
• Last Note Nightmare:
  • "Halycon". The end is a full-on breakdown, complete with Courtney screaming her face off.
  • "Hysteria" is a very beautiful and melodic song... until the end, where it builds up into a very heavy and very low-tuned breakdown.
• Lighter and Softer: Eternal Blue is this compared to the band's work before and since. The music is generally less heavy and more accessible (except "Silk In The Strings" and "Holy Roller"), and the band shifted to a very colourful aesthetic after doing nearly everything in black and white during their early days.
• Man of a Thousand Voices: Courtney LaPlante. Though noticeably toned-down and streamlined in comparison to her previous work, her range of vocal tone and expression is nonetheless just as impressive, and continues to garner praise from music critics. Not only is she able to do powerful, belting cleans like other female vocalists, but she can also incorporate pop-ballad Melismatic Vocals into her style with minimal effort, and just as easily transition to a wide range of Harsh Vocals as needed.
  • Courtney also likes to digitally manipulate her voice using auto-tune, vocoding and formant shifting. "Holy Roller", "The Void", "Black Rainbow", "Crystal Roses" and "Ride The Wave" all feature this.
• The Masochism Tango: "Hurt You" is about a mutually abusive relationship complete with oblique references to the Cold War.
• Miniscule Rocking: The interlude 10:16 on Spiritbox is only 1 minute and 8 seconds long.
• New Sound Album:
  • Eternal Blue is more straightforward-sounding than their previous work. This was a deliberate choice, as the band wanted to write more accessible songs.
  • Rotoscope added more nu-metal elements to the band's sound, as well as some industrial elements on the title track.
  • The Fear Of Fear brought the band back towards its Progressive Metal roots, while keeping the accessibility of Eternal Blue.
  • Tsunami Sea is much more experimental, with more influences from electronic music than previous records
• Nu Metal: A huge influence on the band's sound, and it became more obvious from Eternal Blue onward.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: The final 3 tracks of Tsunami Sea is this as a whole.
  • "Crystal Roses" is mainly a Liquid Drum & Bass-styled track, with heavily autotuned vocals and vocoded backing vocals. Most of the song is very electronic and the full band doesn't come in until the final section.
  • The verses of "Ride The Wave" sound very Depeche Mode. It gets more like typical Spiritbox when the chorus kicks in, though, and it has a very heavy breakdown section.
  • "Deep End" sounds more like an Easycore song, but with a progressive metal twist.
• Post-Metal / Progressive Metal: Whenever they aren't classified as avant-garde or metalcore, they are often this.
• Religion Rant Song: "Holy Roller", of the "Hate the God" variety.
• Scary Musician, Harmless Music: Huge inversion. A bunch of very normal and non-threatening looking guys with a pretty and feminine looking frontwoman who make some often aggressive and often unsettling music with shattering screams.
• Self-Backing Vocalist: Courtney has frequently done this in the studio. Averted after Josh Gilbert joined the band - he frequently does backing vocals live and started doing them in the studio from The Fear of Fear onward.
• Soprano and Gravel:
  • Combined with Melismatic Vocals on the clean side, Courtney is this on her own.
  • Courtney and Josh are a gender-inverted version of how this is typically in heavy metal. Courtney (the woman) is the one who does all the screams, and her clean vocal range is lower in pitch than most women who sing in metal bands. Josh (the man) does not scream and has a very high voice for a male singer in a metal band. In fact, he sings higher than Courtney on many of his parts!
• Signature Style: An eclectic fusion of extreme metal, post-hardcore, electronic, and pop music that pushes the boundaries of what can be acceptable as "metal", born out of the cutting-edge multi-instrumentalist work of Mike Stringer and the impressively diverse vocal talents of frontwoman Courtney LaPlante.
• Special Guest: Ryo Kinoshita (Knosis, ex-Crystal Lake) appears on the single version of "Holy Roller", while Eternal Blue includes a feature from Sam Carter of Architects on "Yellowjacket".
  • Courtney has been a special guest herself on "Contraband" by Make Them Suffer, "The Ride" by Kingdom of Giants, "One Thousand Painful Stings" by The Acacia Strain, "Shivering" by ILLENIUM (which her and Mike co-wrote) and the re-recording of "My House" by Pvris.
  • Josh was a special guest himself on the song "Aura" by Oni, which he also co-wrote and produced.
• Step Up to the Microphone: Josh Gilbert sings Sam Carter's chorus in "Yellowjacket" during live shows if Sam isn't available. He also sings the lead vocal in the chorus of "Perfect Soul".
• Surprisingly Gentle Song:
  • "We Live in a Strange World" and the title track of Eternal Blue. Both songs are decidedly Lighter and Softer than the band's usual output, with elements of hip-hop and synthwave production and no screamed vocals.
  • "Too Close / Too Late" and "Ultraviolet" from The Fear of Fear both have no screamed vocals, and "Ultraviolet" has a similar synthwave-influenced production style to "We Live in a Strange World" from Eternal Blue.
  • "Crystal Roses" from Tsunami Sea. It has no screamed vocals, and there are no heavy guitars until the very end of the song.
• Surreal Music Video:
  • The video for "Holy Roller" is a pastiche of aesthetics lifted straight out of Midsommar and The Blair Witch Project intercut with close-up shots of Courtney LaPlante in full Black Metal garb and screaming the lyrics into the camera.
  • The video for "Ultraviolet" only features Courtney, is filmed in a single long shot, features time speeding up and slowing down almost at random and an odd group of people dancing around her and touching her.
  • The video for "No Loss, No Love" has them performing on pillars standing out of a turbulent sea during certain scenes. Courtney also has horror-themed makeup (including coloured contact lenses) for some scenes, and the entire video is filmed in black and white.
• Trope Codifier: Of modern, pop-and-electronic-influenced Avant-Garde Metal.
• Vocal Tag Team: Courtney and Josh. This happens more during live shows.