"I just love the freedom to get to do whatever you want": Spiritbox's Courtney LaPlante looks to the future, and teases "new stuff on the horizon"

In a new interview, Spiritbox vocalist Courtney LaPlante reflects on her band's meteoric rise, and looks ahead to where the Canadian band might go next.

"We have some new stuff on the horizon," LaPlant tells NME. "I think everyone will be pleasantly surprised this year."

In the interview, LaPlante looks back upon the acclaim heaped upon her band after the release of 2021's Eternal Blue album, and 2022's Rotoscope EP, and admits that she considers it "crazy to go from being in my office trying to [decide] like, ‘Oh, can you go to the coffee shop on our break? Or do I need to go home and make lunch at home?’ And then all of a sudden, I’m on the cover of a magazine. That doesn’t make any sense."

Looking ahead, LaPlante tells NME that songwriting, to her, is like "free therapy", and says, "My mindset is: Does it make me feel happy to get this message out and feel good to sing? Awesome. Let’s cut it and put it on there."

"I just love the freedom to get to do whatever you want," she says, "it all connects together. Because the thing that connects it is that it’s all written by the same people, so no matter what, we’re going to have our love of metal music be imprinted on those songs.

"Trying to write for a sub-genre, I think that’s far too stressful. We’re just writing music that we like: sometimes it’s going to be heavy-sounding or feeling; sometimes it’s going to be really beautiful and light-feeling and maybe the lyrics are just a little bit heavy."

"I think that we’ll always make heavy music," LaPlante muses. "But it’s fun to know that our fans are accepting of whatever we make. They’re letting us figure ourselves out in real time. I like that they’re open-minded, but they’re also really honest. They don’t just lap up anything we do. They’re critical. I hope that we continue to attract really open-minded people."

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.