Review Summary: A flawed, yet still enjoyable, experience.
Sleeping With Sirens has never been the most consistent band. Although they’ve always been somewhat polarizing, their first two albums were mostly praised by listeners and amassed them a sizable fanbase. However, for the better part of the last 15 years (holy cow, where has the time gone), the band’s sound has been in a state of purgatory. With the exception of
Gossip (which, to put it nicely, was a substantial misstep), the band has never really ventured outside their comfort zone, and that’s still very much the case on their 8th album:
An Ending In Itself. Even if you haven’t listened to the singles from this release, if you’re even remotely familiar with Sleeping With Sirens’ schtick, you probably know what a lot of this album sounds like. Because of this, I cannot imagine
An Ending In Itself will convert any of the band’s haters into new fans. Be that as it may, however, the album is still mostly a success because it delivers exactly what their fans expect, but that same familiarity keeps the album from feeling like a meaningful step forward in any way.
For the uninitiated, Sleeping With Sirens’ overall sound can best be described as a blend between swancore and alternative rock, with sprinkles of pop punk and even a few hints of metalcore here-and-there. Most of the time, this amalgamation works in favor of the band, but it’s certainly not always perfect. For starters, lead vocalist Kellin Quinn (and the band as a whole) do a spectacular job on the album at crafting earworms. The lyrics are often cheesy and a bit melodramatic, but I’d be lying if I said the songs themselves weren’t catchy most of the time. Both of the
An Ending In Itself’s lead singles – the album’s title track and
Forever/Always – are fine examples of this. However, catchy doesn’t always necessarily mean “good.” Take, for example,
Left On Repeat. Sure it might get stuck in your head, but the constant “na na na’s” are more annoying than anything else.
There are a handful of moments on
An Ending In Itself where the band attempts to be heavy, and these moments are incredibly inconsistent. At best, the heavy moments are good-but-not-great, such as with the exciting and emotional climax of
Looking Back At Me (which happens to be one of the album’s finest tracks). At worst, the heavy moments can unfortunately be downright awful;
PTSD begins interestingly enough, but the inclusion of a hamfisted nu metal-esque breakdown (that features Quinn rapping and screaming some of the album’s most juvenile lyrics) is one that I cannot wrap my head around. All in all, I can’t help but feel like the band would be better off dropping their awkward attempts at metalcore moments in the future, as they rarely (if ever) elevate the songs they’re featured on. At no point did I find myself wishing the songs were heavier, which makes many of the album’s heavier passages feel unnecessary and shoehorned.
An Ending In Itself is, for better or worse, exactly what you would expect from a Sleeping With Sirens album in 2026. In many ways, the album feels like something the band should’ve released years ago, which is both a good and bad thing. It’s a good thing because it elicits nostalgic feelings of when the band was at their creative peak, but a bad thing because you could argue the band hasn’t done nearly enough to evolve and improve their sound in the last decade. One has to wonder how long the band will continue releasing albums in this style before their sound gets stale – for some, it may already be. Criticisms aside, I still had fun with
An Ending In Itself (although I’m unsure how often I see myself returning to it) and I would recommend giving it at least a trial spin if you’ve ever been a fan of Sleeping With Sirens or their genre contemporaries.
3.25 out of 5
