End, the enigmatic seventh album by Explosions In The Sky, was inspired by darkness, but became a loud, dramatic, wild rumination on life and death.
“Our starting point was the concept of an ending—death, or the end of a friendship or relationship. Every song comes from a story, or an idea one of us has had that we’ve all expanded on and made its own world. Maybe it’s our nature, but we kept feeling that the album title was ultimately open to a lot more interpretation—the end of a thing or a time can mean a stop, but it can also mean a beginning, and what happens after one thing ends might pale in comparison to what it becomes next,” says the band about the album.
End is perhaps the “grandest” Explosions in the Sky album – melding the quiet restraint and crushing feel of their early releases with the sonic texturing and ornate experimentation of their later releases, and their increasingly deep film and television scoring catalogue, influenced by personal tastes stretching from classical to soul to experimental ambient music.
The title “End” furthers a story arc reflected in the album titles that started with the “innocence” of their first album (How Strange, Innocence), progressed through the idealism and romanticism of their second and third albums (Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever and The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place), followed by the introspection (All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone and Take Care Take Care Take Care) and big-picture focus (The Wilderness) of their most recent albums.
The band announced “The End Tour” this spring, bringing their legendary live show experience to 26 cities around the world in late 2023. They are currently scoring a new, undisclosed, television series that will premiere in 2024. End is the band’s seventh, but not final, studio album.
