Explosions in the Sky - End (CD)

“The Austin post-rockers have always had a flair for sweeping soundscapes... Frantic opener ‘Ten Billion People’ offers some apocalyptic urgency while ‘It’s Never Going To Stop’ strips things down to reveal

a more vulnerable, less grandiose (but no less magnificent) side. Twenty four years in, it feels like they’re just beginning and are still full of beautiful surprises.” Record Collector – 4 stars ****

 

“An outfit fully in their groove and firing on all cylinders... Their use of light and shade is unique... The seven instrumentals here possess a poised, powerful sense of structure,

while the record as a whole resonates long after it finishes.” PROG

 

“The band’s first non-soundtrack since The Wilderness is further evidence of EITS’s ability to scale the epic alongside the intimate. The music is varied, best expressed by ‘Peace Or Quiet’, which stretches

their loud-quiet dynamic as far as it can go. Elsewhere, there’s determined optimism in ‘Moving On’ and the extravagant beauty of ‘It’s Never Going To Stop.” Uncut – 7/10

 

“Post-rock’s most luminescent guitars... Six-minute intro ‘Ten Billion People’ builds to a vast crush to match its title; a spectral ‘Loved Ones’ leads to the more solemn ‘Peace Or Quiet’.

Peace is shattered by the closing ‘It’s Never Going To Stop’, which suggests their survivalist instincts, and the band’s longevity, is ever-strong.” MOJO

End 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,” state the band. “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.” 

 

Explosions in the Sky have become the gold standard for bold, emotional, cinematic music. They’ve slowly and organically grown from humble beginnings playing questionably located DIY spaces to opening for Fugazi and Built To Spill to headlining globally renowned venues such as Radio City Music Hall, Royal Albert Hall, the Greek Theatre, and the Sydney Opera House. Nearly 25 years of being a band (with the same line-up the entire time), they’ve achieved remarkable critical and commercial success making an especially non-commercial style of music – having sold nearly two million albums worldwide and scored five major motion pictures to date. They’ve become the sound of modern sports films, documentaries, and television series – due largely to their genre-defining Friday Night Lights score – and have found a diverse array of major artists as fans as well, having been invited to tour with Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Flaming Lips, Death Cab for Cutie, and many others.

End marks the band’s seventh, but not final, studio album.