Every Time I Die

Every Time I Die's 'Ex Lives' turns 10; limited hot pink vinyl repress available now

The much-missed Every Time I Die‘s pivotal sixth album, 2012’s Ex Lives, turned 10 this month and for the occasion, we’ve teamed up with the band and Epitaph Records on a new vinyl pressing of the album on hot pink wax, matching the log on the album cover. It’s the deluxe edition with three bonus tracks, and the variant is limited to just 300 copies and available exclusively in our stores. Pre-order yours now while they last.

Here’s what we wrote about Ex Lives in our ETID album guide:

If New Junk Aesthetic concluded the first chapter of Every Time I Die’s career, then Ex Lives absolutely began the second. By 2012, the 2000s metalcore boom was dead and gone, with most of the early ’00s bands broken up or changing their sound, as new subgenres like deathcore, crabcore, and Risecore had taken over. Instead of chasing trends or falling into familiar patterns, Every Time I Die put out Ex Lives, an album that marked their most drastic creative leap in years but also felt distinctly like Every Time I Die and no other band. This album kickstarted a new era for the band, one where they continued to define what it meant to be Every Time I Die, one that attracted a new generation of fans, and one that eventually led to the most ambitious music of their career, their 2021 swan song Radical. ETID’s entire career had been one long work in progress, which is why it never got unexciting, but much of what culminated on Radical began on Ex Lives. Without this album, the final decade of ETID’s career would’ve played out very differently. And this one holds up as one of their best.

Ex Lives makes ETID’s mission clear right off the bat with album opener “Underwater Bimbos from Outer Space,” which quickly and deservedly became one of the band’s signature tracks. “I WANT TO BE DEAD WITH MY FRIENDS!” Keith shrieks repeatedly before the music even fully kicks in, and once it does, Jordan and Andy bust out some of their most furious mathcore riffage since Hot Damn!. Just when you think you’ve got it pegged as one of ETID’s ragers, they pull a 180 and bring in a clean vocal hook that simultaneously channels their pop side and their experimental side — a move that’s both thrilling and unexpected. And as Keith displays on this song and throughout the rest of Ex Lives, his lyricism had taken a big leap with this album. He could still be sardonic and theatrical on this album (“Places, everyone!”, he commands on “I Suck [Blood]”), but Ex Lives leaned heavily into the more poetic, philosophical side that would define Keith’s songwriting for the final decade of ETID’s career. And there’s a line on “UBFOS” that’s been quoted a lot since ETID broke up: “We made the scene when we made a scene/And though it was brief, it meant everything.” Yeah.

Expertly produced by Joe Barresi (who had previously worked with Queens of the Stone Age, Bad Religion, Isis, and more), Ex Lives has a big, spacious sound that allows ETID’s pure aggression to shine through, but that’s much warmer and more organic sounding than typical metalcore production. It was the perfect fit for the band’s increasingly experimental songwriting, which was going in all sorts of new directions on Ex Lives. Plenty of the classic ETID sound remained, but Ex Lives is a weirder, deeper, more wholly original album than much of what ETID had released previously. It seamlessly and unpredictably moves between screaming and singing, between riffs and atmosphere, and it’s packed with memorable hooks and one-liners. It was their first album with drummer Ryan “Leg$” Leger, and maybe he helped breathe some new life into the band, but it really just felt like ETID as a whole had become something they had never been before. Earlier Every Time I Die albums had reached beyond metalcore, but this album marked the first time ETID fully transcended any scene or genre.

Read the full album guide here. Stream the album and watch the video for “Underwater Bimbos from Outer Space” below. Pre-order our new variant here.

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