Vancouver Post-Hardcore Vets BY A THREAD Return with New Album Mirrored Life – Out Now via Spartan Records
By A Thread return with Mirrored Life, their first new full-length in 14 years, out now via Spartan Records. The Vancouver band, originally forged in the city’s late-’90s post-hardcore underground, built a cult following with their emotionally raw, melodic debut Last of the Daydreams on Revelation Records. Now, with founding members Sean Lande and John Franco joined by drummer Gabe Mantle (Gob) and bassist Carl McBeath, Mirrored Life marks not a comeback but a reinvestment in the band’s core values: catharsis, connection, and uncompromising intensity.
Following years of lineup changes and low-key activity, the band re-emerged in 2011 with a self-titled second LP on Revelation, a sonically expanded effort that leaned into mood, dynamics, and atmosphere. That momentum eventually gave way to a new chapter altogether, sparked by informal jam sessions during the pandemic. One song led to another, and before long a full album had taken shape. Written and recorded amid personal loss and major life shifts, Mirrored Life channels grief, introspection, and resilience into the heaviest, most collaborative music of their career.
Lead single “Void” sets the tone with stark intensity. “It’s about feeling alone in a world that seems, in many ways, to be dying,” says Lande. “Consumerism, a lack of empathy, cognitive dissonance… it’s important to understand how our actions create a ripple effect.” That ripple reverberates throughout Mirrored Life, where themes of loss, reflection, and survival don’t seek tidy answers but instead live in the tension of experience.
Moody, reverb-soaked textures and deliberate pacing define the album’s sonic landscape, with production split between Vancouver’s Raincity Recorders and the band’s homes — and Franco taking on mixing duties over the course of a year. Songs like “Tempest,” written about the death of Lande’s mother, and the devastating closer “Connaught,” dedicated to a close friend, push their lyrical focus inward. “The last 15 years have been hard on the BAT family,” says Franco. “We lost so many people. This record naturally drifted in that direction.”
For fans of emotionally charged post-hardcore and atmospheric, slow-burning heaviness — think early Cave In, Far, Hum, and later-era Touché Amoré — Mirrored Life offers plenty to hold onto. This is By A Thread at their most deliberate and unified, distilling decades of experience into something that feels both urgent and timeless.