“Atonement” by Anberlin, Monday, June 24, 2024

It was the beginning of a rough year. In January, my favorite band from when I was in high school announced they were breaking up by the end of the year. I was in the middle of a hellish teaching contract in South Korea, and it looked like I could never see Anberlin perform again live. Before disbanding, the band would release their seventh studio album, Lowborn. Of course, the break up didn’t last and Anberlin got back together only four years later to play a reunion show and began touring the year after that. Then in 2022, the band released Silverline, a 5-song EP; another EP, Convinced, last year; and will release their eighth studio record, Vega, on August 2nd, which will be a combination of Silverline and Convinced with two new songs featuring the band's new touring vocalist, Matty Mullins.

I FOUND PEACE IN A FOREIGN ATONEMENT.  At the end of 2013, lead singer Stephen Christian told his bandmates that he would give Anberlin a year to say farewell. Christian talks about the disappointment from that time on the Your Favorite Band Podcast. Christian talks about how their major label’s marketing team failed to promote their sixth studio album Vital and they were unable to launch a radio single as their previous records had. Christian talked to Michael Clark on the Caught on the Mike Podcast about the moment the decision to leave Anberlin solidified. He was in London, missing his wife and children, wishing to be with them rather than touring with Anberlin. Balancing a touring career with his marriage and raising his children, Stephen decided that his tenure as Anberlin’s lead singer was over. While band members had different feelings about Stephen’s decision, they ultimately decided that they couldn’t be Anberlin without Stephen Christian. The band came to a different conclusion ten years later when Stephen decided to take another hiatus from the re-formed group.
 
I DON’T WANNA GO AT IT ALONE. Along with their exhaustive farewell tour, which included many dates on the 2014 Vans Warped Tour, Anberlin decided to release their final studio album, Lowborn, returning to Tooth & Nail Records. The album serves as part explanation for the band’s break up and part experimentation into sounds that the band hadn’t had a chance to explore. Vital had opened the band up to electronic elements, as drummer Nate Young, the youngest member of the band, was looking for new sounds to keep Anberlin’s formula fresh. But unlike Vital, the band’s seventh album wasn’t for touring. Not even the album’s lead single, “Stranger Ways,” was played live; only the opening track “We Are Destroyer” was a regular on the band’s farewell setlist. Instead, the band gave the time to the songs that Anberlin fans would have to do without live indefinitely. The band played today’s song, “Atonement” live at their final show at Orlando’s House of Blues. While the song wasn’t a single from the album, it serves as the heart of the album, offering the clearest explanation for the band’s breakup along with the final track, “Harbinger.” The band called Lowborn the “vibey-est” Anberlin album when discussing the tracks on their final Lockdown Livestream, partly because of Young’s musical direction. Besides the band-specific lyrics in which Christian talks about “skeleton keys” referencing the cover of the band’s B-sides project, Lost Songs, and finding “peace in a foreign atonement,” the song is one of the band’s most pop-radio-sounding tracks Anberlin has released. The song beautifully blends the album’s three producers--Aaron Marsh tracking instruments, Matt Goldman tracking drums, and Aaron Sprinkle tracking vocals. The song is beautiful with its New Age synth tones throughout the chorus to the gentle guitar solo reminiscent of “We Owe This to Ourselves” to the heavily auto-tuned outro as a siren song fades out. Somehow, though, I envision a veteran country artist covering the track, maybe changing some of the Anberlin-specific lyrics. Anberlin means so much to so many people that I wonder how their influence will show up in the future--maybe it won’t be in the form of a country song.




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