Eternal Blue: a desert rental house, an NSA hacking tool, and Spiritbox's debut album (2026)

On September 17, 2026, Wikipedia's editors chose Eternal Blue as the day's featured article, the editor-curated slot that places one fully vetted subject on the encyclopedia's front page. 1 2 The album it describes came out five years ago today. It is the debut record of a Canadian band called Spiritbox, and it was written and recorded in a rented house on twenty acres of Mojave desert during the second spring of the pandemic. 2

The two people at its centre, the singer Courtney LaPlante and the guitarist Michael Stringer, had spent most of the previous decade as replacement members in a band that was already somebody else's. 2 They made the album themselves with one outside producer, and they named it after a hacking tool built by the United States National Security Agency. 2 By December 2021 it was at number one on Loudwire's list of the best rock and metal albums of the year. 2

The record runs 43 minutes and 7 seconds, moves through five varieties of heavy metal, and has LaPlante screaming and singing across the same twelve songs. 2 Its first week in America produced 23,000 album-equivalent units and a debut at number 13 on the Billboard 200; by March 2025 the American total had reached 230,000. 2

Leaving someone else's band

In 2015 LaPlante and Stringer were an engaged couple inside Iwrestledabearonce, an American metalcore band. LaPlante had joined it in 2012, replacing the vocalist Krysta Cameron, who left mid-tour, and Stringer came in on guitar and played on what turned out to be the band's final album, Hail Mary, in 2015. 2 Both felt their careers standing still, and both were uncomfortable in the role of replacements. They left in late 2015, and after they married they announced a new project, Spiritbox, on October 9, 2017. 2

A single, "The Beauty of Suffering", came first, followed by a seven-song self-titled EP on October 27, 2017, with their former bandmate Mikey Montgomery on drums. Bill Crook, the bassist of the pop-punk band Living with Lions, joined, and in 2018 Ryan Loerke of Shreddy Krueger became the band's first permanent drummer. 2 Through 2018 and early 2019 Spiritbox released five singles that were then collected as an EP, Singles Collection, on April 26, 2019, followed by two standalone songs, "Rule of Nines" in 2019 and "Blessed Be" in 2020. They recorded all of it at home on their own equipment and sent it elsewhere to be mixed and mastered. 2

Loerke left in 2020 and was replaced by Zev Rose, a drummer from Philadelphia whom the band met two days before a short tour that the pandemic cancelled in March 2020. 2 Work on a first full-length record was already under way.

A desert house and three weeks

Most of the songs were written in 2018 and 2019, years before the band had a release date. "Holy Roller" was written in January 2020 and played unfinished on a European tour that March. 2 The album was scheduled for April 2020; the pandemic stopped it, and Spiritbox put out "Holy Roller" as a single while they waited. 2

In September 2020 the band announced that Rise Records would release its music in partnership with Pale Chord, the label Spiritbox had set up for itself. Pre-production with the producer Daniel Braunstein, a former guitarist in the band Volumes, ran over the video-calling service Zoom. 2 In January 2021 Revolver included the coming album in its list of the 60 most anticipated records of the year. 2

Then the band moved into the desert. They took a rented house on a twenty-acre (8.1-hectare) property in Joshua Tree, California, which they called Old Heard Ranch, and worked there in what they described as their own bubble, writing and reworking material together. 2 They set an April deadline so the record could still come out within the year. Recording took three weeks in February and finished on March 1, 2021, with Braunstein and Stringer producing and Braunstein engineering and mixing. 2

One detail from those sessions lives in the credits rather than the songs. Crook was the band's bassist, and the bass parts on the record are Stringer's; Crook sang backing vocals. 2

Joshua trees, yuccas and low desert scrub on rocky slopes under a blue evening sky — Joshua trees and rocky hills in the Quail Mountain area of Joshua Tree National Park at sunset, photographed for the National Park Service by Carmen Aurrecoechea in March 2025. Spiritbox wrote and recorded the album in February 2021 at a rented house on a twenty-acre property in Joshua Tree, California, in the same stretch of Mojave desert. File: Sunset over a desert landscape (52014036815).jpg 3

What the record sounds like

The infobox on Wikipedia lists five genres for Eternal Blue: metalcore, progressive metal, djent, alternative metal and post-metal. 2 That spread is the review pages in miniature. LaPlante calls Spiritbox a metalcore band, Metal Hammer reached for "post-metalcore", and AllMusic described the record as a "nu-metal-meets-djent riff-fest". 2 Djent takes its name from the clipped, palm-muted guitar sound at the centre of it; a breakdown is the slow, heavy passage that the heaviest bands in this music build toward. Digital synthesisers run through the album, enough of them that Guitar World settled on "digitally infused metal". 2

The band was listening to 1980s pop, Nine Inch Nails and early post-punk acts such as the Cure while they made it, and the sparse, airy song structures of 1980s dark rock sit underneath everything. 2 LaPlante screams and sings across the record, often within the same song. 2 Stringer has said he played in a "dissonant, spastic, crazy" style in his earlier bands and deliberately went another way with Spiritbox, writing parts meant to lodge in a listener's memory instead of packing a song with notes. 2 The guitars usually sit in drop F#, a tuning well below the standard one, and some songs go lower; "Holy Roller" changes tuning four times with a pitch shifter. 2

LaPlante wrote most of the lyrics, working from frustration and sadness, and she told Exclaim! that she writes about the things that upset her, in metaphor. 2

The album and its title track take their name from EternalBlue, a computer exploit developed by the National Security Agency. LaPlante lifted the phrase for its atmosphere, as a word to hang the record's mood on. 2 The songs themselves stay with frustration, insecurity, and the end of a friendship.

Twelve songs, and what each one is doing

"Sun Killer" opens the album. It was written in January 2020 with a band's walk-on in mind: LaPlante wanted a dramatic entrance for live shows, and the song was picked to open the record for the same reason. 2

"Hurt You" is the nu-metal song, also written before the pandemic, about the pull of a relationship that is doing both people harm — "toxic co-dependency", in LaPlante's phrase. Its working title was "Heavy Clown", a nod to Shawn "Clown" Crahan of Slipknot and to the nu-metal references in the words. 2

"Yellowjacket" carries the record's only guest appearance. Sam Carter, the singer of the British band Architects, contacted Spiritbox during the sessions and offered to appear on a song; LaPlante had planned to make the album alone, partly because travel was difficult and partly because she wanted to prove herself as a vocalist without help. Her own performance on the track moves between her "scariest" screams and ordinary speech, a device she took from 1990s alternative rock bands such as Butthole Surfers. 2

"The Summit" was an attempt to bend genres past the point where the labels hold. LaPlante found it hard to call the song heavy metal at all, and sang parts of it with the phrasing of Charli XCX and the Weeknd in mind; Stringer named it his favourite song on the album. 2

"Secret Garden", written in mid-2019, is the record's romantically sorrowful turn and its clearest Deftones homage — the band's working name for it was "Chino", after Deftones' singer Chino Moreno. LaPlante described it as showing "the fluidity that is inherent in heavy music", and warned that it was "just one part of a full body of work that may not sound exactly like this song". 2

"Silk in the Strings", among the most intense songs on the record, came late in the writing. When Stringer played her the musical idea, LaPlante worked out her own part by imagining how Wu-Tang Clan would phrase it, approaching the song as a rapper rather than as a metal frontwoman. 2

"Holy Roller" casts LaPlante as the Devil, or as personified evil speaking inside the listener's head. The critic Alex Sievers called it the band's heaviest song and "far darker and more violent" than anything they had released before, and Stringer's pick-scrape on the track has been likened to the playing of Gojira. 2

The title track was one of the first songs written for the album. Braunstein helped the band reach back toward new wave on it, with Depeche Mode and Tears for Fears as reference points, and the lyrics came out of a difficult falling-out with a friend. 2

"We Live in a Strange World" and "Halcyon" are about the band's own success: the first as LaPlante's anxiety about being noticed and her fear of failing, the second as the pressure to do something with the attention. 2

"Circle with Me" was the last song written and the only one finished in the studio. It traces that same anxiety toward confidence, with breathy vocals and guitars blended into electronics, and it takes cues from Evanescence and Tears for Fears. 2

The record closes with "Constance", a ballad dedicated to LaPlante's grandmother Phyllis, who died while the pandemic made it impossible for her granddaughter to say goodbye or attend the funeral. The song is named after the grandmother of the music video's director, Dylan Hryciuk; Constance was in the late stages of dementia when the video was released, and the video is dedicated to her. 2

Release, promotion, and a $10,000 gift

On May 25, 2021, Spiritbox announced that the album would arrive on September 17. Within a day, 6,500 vinyl copies had been pre-ordered. 2 Five songs had come out ahead of it, and all five reached the Billboard charts in the United States.

Single	Released	Peak on the US Billboard charts
"Holy Roller"	July 3, 2020	No. 12, Hot Hard Rock Songs 2
"Constance"	December 4, 2020	No. 19, Hot Hard Rock Songs 2
"Circle with Me"	April 30, 2021	No. 1, Hard Rock Digital Song Sales 2
"Secret Garden"	May 25, 2021	No. 34, Mainstream Rock 2
"Hurt You"	August 20, 2021	No. 20, Hot Hard Rock Songs 2

That a debut metal band got onto the air at all was partly the work of one station: "Holy Roller" spent seven weeks at number one on SiriusXM Liquid Metal's Devil's Dozen countdown, and the station's listeners voted it the best song of 2020. The song later travelled further than the album did — a remix with Ryo Kinoshita of Crystal Lake stayed five weeks at number two on the same countdown, and a nine-year-old named Harper covered it on the seventeenth season of America's Got Talent, then sang it live with the band in London. 2

Getting in front of audiences turned out to be harder than getting the record out. Spiritbox tried to tour in July 2021, supporting Limp Bizkit in the United States, and the run was cancelled after a few dates over pandemic safety concerns, leaving the band with unexpected bills. We Came as Romans let them keep using their stage lighting without paying for it. Brent Smith, the singer of Shinedown, had never met Spiritbox; he sent them $10,000 because he was worried the band would fold under the financial strain. 2

Serious touring began in 2022, when Spiritbox were special guests on Underoath's Voyeurist tour in February and March and then joined the second leg of Ghost's Imperatour alongside Mastodon through August and September. 2 Bill Crook left the band shortly after that tour was announced and was replaced by Josh Gilbert, formerly of As I Lay Dying. Spiritbox played their first British show in June 2022 at Download Festival, and their own headlining tour of the United States did not happen until April 2023, with After the Burial and Intervals. 2

A band playing a large outdoor festival stage seen from above the crowd, with purple spotlights and the band's name on the backdrop — Spiritbox on the Orbit Stage at Rock am Ring in Germany on June 3, 2022, in the band's first year of touring behind the album. Andreas Lawen photographed the set for Wikimedia Deutschland's Festival Summer project. File: Spiritbox - Rock am Ring 2022-5232.jpg 4

What critics heard

Metacritic, which averages published reviews into a single score out of 100, records 84 for Eternal Blue and labels the result "universal acclaim"; four reviews went into the figure. 2

Kerrang! gave it five stars out of five, and its reviewer Steve Beebee wrote about the distance between the "dreamlike soundscapes" of "Secret Garden" and "The Summit" and the weight of "Silk in the Strings" and "Holy Roller". 2 Metal Injection's Max Morin scored it 10 out of 10 and said the record was put together like the work of veterans rather than a band making its first album. 2 Outburn's Nathan Katsiaficas called it a "modern metal masterpiece" and singled out "Halcyon" for the way it turns from light to heavy. 2 AllMusic's Neil Z. Yeung heard Tesseract, Deftones and Meshuggah in it, and thought their fans would take to "Circle with Me" and the title track. 2

Two reviewers marked it down. Kill Your Stereo's Alex Sievers gave the album 75 out of 100 and thought it leaned too heavily on atmospheric effects, while praising its range and calling the hook of "Secret Garden" one of its strongest moments. 2 Sputnikmusic's Robert Garland came away impressed and noted that the band still had room to grow. 2

Where it charted

Eternal Blue entered the Billboard 200 at number 13 with 23,000 album-equivalent units in the tracking week of September 17 to 23, 2021. Album-equivalent units count streams and individual track sales alongside whole albums, and 19,000 of that week's total were full albums. 2 That placed it third on the country's Top Album Sales chart for the week ending October 2, and first on two of Billboard's rock charts. 2

Chart	Peak
US Billboard 200	13 2
US Top Rock Albums (Billboard)	1 2
US Top Hard Rock Albums (Billboard)	1 2
US Independent Albums (Billboard)	2 2
US Vinyl Album Sales (Billboard)	1 2
UK Albums (Official Charts)	19 2
UK Rock & Metal Albums (Official Charts)	2 2
UK Vinyl Albums (Official Charts)	2 2
Scottish Albums (Official Charts)	8 2
Australian Albums (ARIA)	8 2
Australian Vinyl Albums (ARIA)	1 2
Canadian Albums (Billboard)	17 2
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)	17 2
Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)	40 2
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)	144 2

The Belgian placing and the Finnish one are the honest edges of the picture: this was a record that sold well where metal sells, and made little impression where it does not.

Four details worth keeping

The year-end lists. Loudwire put Eternal Blue first among the 45 best rock and metal albums of 2021, and Metal Hammer put it first among the year's metalcore records. Kerrang! ranked it second in its 50 best albums of 2021, Revolver second in its 25 best, Exclaim! tenth among Canadian releases, Guitar World thirteenth among the year's guitar albums, Consequence fourteenth among metal and hard rock records, and PopMatters seventh among progressive rock and metal albums. Loudwire also placed "Circle with Me" second among the year's best metal songs. 2
The score and what sits behind it. The 84 on Metacritic rests on four reviews, and the individual marks ranged from 75 out of 100 at Kill Your Stereo to 10 out of 10 at both Metal Injection and Outburn. Kerrang! gave five stars, Metal Hammer four and a half, Upset and New Noise four, AllMusic three and a half. 2
What the vinyl did. The 6,500 pre-orders that arrived in the first day became a first place on the vinyl album chart in the United States and another in Australia, and a second place in Britain — numbers that a band with no prior full-length release had no reason to expect. 2
What it has sold since. By March 2025 the album had sold 230,000 album-equivalent units in the United States and roughly 24,000 copies in Britain. In its own release year it finished 50th on Billboard's Top Hard Rock Albums year-end chart and 137th on Top Current Album Sales. 2

Verbatim quotes

"Who cares if this song is similar to a Billie Eilish song and this song is the heaviest song we've ever done outside of 'Holy Roller'? It doesn't matter, it all belongs in the same body of work."
— Michael Stringer, on how the band stopped thinking about genre while making the album 2

"Eternal Blue is what metal sounds like in 2021. No add-ons required."
— Max Morin, Metal Injection 2

"Eternal Blue is a staggeringly brilliant record that resoundingly delivers on the hype."
— Dannii Leivers, Metal Hammer 2

"inhumanly heavy"
— Courtney LaPlante on "Yellowjacket" 2

"the things that upset me or make me feel self-conscious and insecure in metaphor"
— Courtney LaPlante, on the material she writes about, in Exclaim! 2

Five years on

Eternal Blue is still the record that made the band's name. Spiritbox followed it with the EP Rotoscope in 2022, and the songs keep circulating: "Holy Roller" has been played on a talent show by a nine-year-old and sung live with the band. 2 The name on the cover came from a hacking tool that was never meant to leave its developer's hands, and it ended up on a debut that topped the year's metal lists.

References

1
Wikipedia: Today's featured article/September 17, 2026
en.wikipedia.org
2
Eternal Blue (album) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
3
File: Sunset over a desert landscape (52014036815).jpg - Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.org
4
File: Spiritbox - Rock am Ring 2022-5232.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.org