Acceptance released the deluxe version of their 2020 album, Wild, Free, today via Tooth & Nail Records. The deluxe edition also features three new songs for fans to devour: “Lonely,” “Explanations and Excuses,” and “Don’t Look Back.”
Since their beloved debut album, Phantoms, the Seattle-based band was poised for greatness. Audiences were wowed by their emotional delivery and catchy heaviness. Produced by Aaron Sprinkle (Anberlin, Demon Hunter, MxPx) and mixed by J.R. McNeely (Underoath, Emery, Icon For Hire), the album was a Top 25 Modern Rock radio hit and debuted at No. 3 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart. But as music industry frustrations mounted and adult life responsibilities beckoned, the band decided to call it quits, and moved on to other things.
In the months and years after the band’s premature dissolution, Phantoms organically found an audience around the world as people connected to its sonic weight and themes. Acceptance returned with the aptly-titled Colliding by Design in 2017 and never really stopped writing.
The story of Acceptance was too strong to remain confined to pop-rock lore forever. In 2020, the band returned with Wild, Free. An epic collection colored with dynamic atmosphere and vibe, the band’s third record combines sonic storytelling akin to The Killers and Bruce Springsteen, the heartland neo-psych rock of The War On Drugs, the ’80s synthwave/yacht rock flourish of Colliding by Design, and the Jimmy Eat World-flavored power-pop of scene landmark Phantoms.
Wild, Free was recorded in fits and starts, with both Sprinkle and McNeely returning (along with J. Hall, who mixed two tracks). The process allowed for bigger creative ambition and a broader focus, merging the band’s classic anthem-making skills with an incredibly ambitious new direction. The power-pop and emotive aggression familiar to fans persists within the sound, but with a greater emphasis on raw, organic feel and less rigid song structure, resulting in songs that reward repeated listens.
Now, Acceptance returns with three new songs that found their way to the surface between records, tying together past and present. They share more about one of the new tracks, “Lonely”:
“It’s a commentary on how isolated society has become over the last decade. The urgency of the message is brought forth with an emotional introductory vocal countered by a single guitar that highlights the widening between our past and present.”
Following the release, the band will appear at the sold-out When We Were Young Festival in Las Vegas this coming weekend. The will also play the Anberlin anniversary show at The Observatory in Santa Ana, CA on October 24.
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