Sleeping With Sirens "An Ending In Itself" Album Review, Music Video Analysis, and Tour
- Sage Plapp
- Aug 14
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 17
A brand new album, music videos, and an upcoming tour. Sleeping With Sirens have definitely been busy as of late, and they are on fire. Anyone who wants to know anything about what’s recent from Sleeping With Sirens and what’s to come needs to look no further; it’s all right here!
Sleeping With Sirens’ new album, An Ending In Itself, and its tracklist
An Ending In Itself is a 12-track LP that dropped on June 12. This album throws back to the classic Sleeping With Sirens sound, but it takes the experience and work of the past few years to refine it. It also follows more recent themes, such as a fallen world, mental health struggles, and a search for hope. That being said, this album also explores a theme of searching for faith, which isn’t prevalent in the Sleeping With Sirens discography. An Ending In Itself goes out to everyone’s inner teen and young adult, belting out Let's Cheers To This somewhere on a car ride in the past. Here is the tracklist for An Ending In Itself:
1. An Ending In Itself
2. Forever/Always
3. God In My Head
4. Need You Here
5. Left On Repeat
6. House Of Matches
7. Waiting For You
8. Paralyzed
9. Process
10. PTSD
11. Looking Back At Me
12. Storm Clouds
An Ending In Itself: Starwave’s Highlights
This entire album is a strong release and deserves more than a front-to-back listen. That being said, here are some highlights from here at Starwave! This is aside from the tracks with music videos, which will be shared in the next section.
Highlight 1: “Need You Here”
“Need You Here” catches listeners off guard from the start. A quick, strong guitar beat ushers in the music quickly, but it pulls back into a bit of a softer vocal. The drums in this track are really strong at carrying things forward with their upbeat strikes, but the rest of the instrumentation has a bit more of a smooth sway. In this, it has really great energy without feeling rushed and over-the-top. The pre-chorus has a heavy instrumentation back and forth with solo vocals in a bit of a call-and-response, which lands well in the ear. This helps to pull listeners in before the catchy yet introspective chorus. Also, there’s a lower-energy, more ethereal bridge that starts around 02:22. This track is a rollercoaster of energy, and it saves different shifts to remain engaging.
Lyrically, “Need You Here” is about loving someone and feeling they are needed after a time of struggle. The first verse seems to detail a relationship that got caught up in bad habits and distance, which feels as if it led to lost time. Though the main voice of the track struggles, they see that this partner has stuck with them and has shown them beauty and their own light. Part of the bridge goes, “So let's just take our time, honey, we'll be just fine / I've been down for so long, but now I see the light.” Overall, it seems to acknowledge a broken past and a want to do things right this time around.
Highlight 2: PTSD
“PTSD” starts a bit opposite to “Need You Here.” This track begins with some clacks of the drumsticks, and immediately, mind-bending guitars and a forceful vocal enter. This whole track is an anthemic burst forward, with the guitars really finding a space to shine. It’s a song to belt along to, to mosh to, and to prepare for (or do) any high-energy task with. In the intro, between some of the main lines, some growly screams in the background drive in a rage-filled, punchy sound. At 01:25, the vocals fade into a whisper for a repetition of the main hook, “Is this what you wanted?” This comes with a really strong bass lead and is followed by some of the strongest vocals on the album, all with a strong rhythmic intrigue. This breaks into a chorus repetition with a really strong outro before a final crash that ushers out the track.
“PTSD” seems to be a track of disappointment at a disconnect throughout a generation. The intro goes, “I'm sick with frustration / This whole generation / No communication / When nobody's listening.” It later details feelings of frustration, disappointment, and anxiety. It’s poetic in the way it talks about a certain situation without fully describing it. There is a “you” who builds things up, throws them away, and lets and puts down a collective “us.” One reading of this track could be that it details a disappointment in political power and how it builds anxiety, loss of hope, and a falling apart.
Highlight 3: “Looking Back At Me”
This comes to “Looking Back At Me,” which is intriguing, as it details a search for faith and a want for something greater to be there. What makes it interesting is that it does this in an overt way, which isn’t typical for Sleeping With Sirens. Before getting to that comes the music.
This track starts off slow in the intro, with soft vocals and a reverby guitar carrying the instrumentation. After this, it introduces some bass and kick-heavy drums at 0:42. Then, the drums pick up, and the track starts to speed up. At 1:21, the guitars cut in with a thrashier sound, and the vocals break into a belt. Later on, there’s a bit with guitars that float around in prominence in the stereo after pulling back just a bit, and it provides a steady up-and-down flow of energy, the chorus hitting the hardest. The bridge also does well at finding a softer sound; however, there are cuts of some heavy drums and guitar that jump in and out. This track’s flow is a bit erratic with its highs and lows, and this builds suspense around its flow.
Now come the lyrics. The intro talks about how faith comes like a flame to wash “us” clean. The chorus is where the narrative delves more into the religious range; it explores a feeling that the main voice of the song still has a belief in something greater than themself and others, and they send a prayer, hoping that something is listening from the other side. There’s an aspect of the narrator being unsure, but they know there’s still a part of them that believes in a higher power. Also, the bridge is a direct reference to the hymn “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” All in all, this is a unique perspective from what Sleeping With Sirens has previously put out, and it’s intriguing to see them take this new direction.
New Sleeping With Sirens Music Videos
Alongside and leading up to the release of An Ending In Itself, Sleeping With Sirens have dropped some music videos. In order of release, these include “An Ending In Itself” on March 19, “Forever/Always” on April 24, and “House Of Matches” on June 11. All of the music videos are directed by Max Moore. This doesn’t even mention the visualizer for “Paralyzed,” which dropped on May 21! The visualizer features lyrics with a nostalgic T.V. playing gritty performance videos in the background, with lyrics in the foreground.
“An Ending In Itself” Video Analysis
The music video for “An Ending In Itself” is absolutely stunning. This video ushers in a grayscale shot of Kellin Quinn standing in the doorway of a room with tile walls, barren trees on the right and left. Then, it cuts between each bandmate standing in similar rooms, with dead trees surrounding them. Crisp cuts flash between the bandmates before picturing a tree with orange leaves, and then an orange door. Quinn opens the door to find the tree, and as he enters this room, the grayscale blooms into color. This tree is reminiscent of the album cover for their debut, With Ears To See And Eyes To Hear. In a bit of time, the whole band is pictured in color with an orange floor, but mostly black-and-white tones (guitarist Nick Martin’s red hair really jumps out in these scenes). There are barren trees surrounding the band in the room they’re in.
In the rest of the video, it cuts between the grayscale scenes of each band member, Quinn in the room with the tree with the orange leaves, and the full band with the warm tones that pop. Quinn grabs one of the leaves off the tree in the room and sits in a corner to ponder it. At around 2:25, during the bridge of the song, a lighter flicks in front of the tree, then just as a really strong bass breakdown hits, it ignites. The orange from the fire lights up every scene, then the leaves spin up and start raining over the whole band. The whole video is gorgeously shot and produced, and the use of color really stands out! Also, song-wise, this song has such a hopeful lyrical exploration. A part of the chorus goes, “There’s a happy ending / It’ll change with time.”
“Forever/Always” Video Analysis
The “Forever/Always” video has some running themes from the prior video. Specifically, the orange and warm tones that pop. However, this one takes place in a forest and field, mostly dead trees surrounding the band, but with some deep green and brown tones. There’s just a bit of a warp in some of the camera movements and some fuzz overlapping things, which makes the atmosphere somewhat haunting. In the shots of the full band, Tony Pizzuti is rocking a deep red guitar, which pairs amazingly with Martin’s hair. At 0:31, an orange Cardinal is introduced, which becomes important to the visual narrative.
Between cuts of the band playing, Quinn finds an orange box of matches, and the cardinal takes off. There are also scenes of each of the bandmates wandering in the forest. Where do they all (including the cardinal) collect in the end? At an orange door, likely the one featured in the video for “An Ending In Itself.” It finishes on a shot from inside the door, the walls seemingly covered in black plastic, with Quinn looking inward. Due to the tree featured in the first video, this may just be a gateway into the past.
“House Of Matches” Video Analysis
The video for “House of Matches” picks up right where “Forever/Always” left off. A view from inside that orange door with Quinn standing in the doorway. Now, it’s apparent that the black plastic walls are a hallway. The band, in this video, is featured in a square room of the same material. There are also cuts to a small house made of matches within a square wall that comes out of a hallway-like structure with an entrance. Quinn walks up and ignites the house from the bottom with a match.
This house of matches goes up in flames from the bottom to the top, the flames growing larger as the music video progresses. At 2:18, it cuts to a close-up of the entryway, water pouring in from the opening. This shot is really pretty, as the water washes pebbles and sand toward the camera. This water eventually splashes as it collides with the house, but the flames stay lit as the bottom gets engulfed. Over time, the house fizzles out and collapses into the water.
Sleeping With Sirens’ Upcoming Tour
Sleeping With Sirens have been delivering a lot lately, but it doesn’t stop there. Fresh off the release of their album, they are about to kick off a tour in the U.S. and then find their way to Europe. This tour starts on July 18th and will end on March 7th; that’s almost 8 months. Most of the dates are in September, October, and early November of this year for the U.S. Then there will be a hiatus in December and January. The Europe leg of the tour starts on February 16, 2027. Anyone who’s looking for tickets can find them on their website here.
So, that’s what Sleeping With Sirens have been up to. They finally dropped the phenomenal An Ending In Itself. This album is a collection of 12 tracks that come alongside one visualizer and three music videos. Also, they’re not about to slow down quite yet. Their tour kicks off on July 18, and for any die-hard fans or anyone who has enjoyed this album as much as Starwave has, now is the time to check when they’re near. It’s also a great time to stream the album!
Written by Sage Plapp
