Armor For Sleep return with an album that treats memory like a weapon. It’s delicate, devastating, and impossible to disarm. For those who may not be as old as me and missed their emergence into the emo/indie scene, the Teaneck, New Jersey band started in 2001. Led by frontman Ben Jorgensen, they dropped gems like Dream to Make Believe (2003) and What to Do When You Are Dead (2005). They built a reputation for emotionally charged post-hardcore/emo with concept-album ambition. The band went on hiatus in 2009, reunited in 2020, and now return with There Is No Memory. It’s ten years on from their original peak but they are sounding as vital as ever.
Armor For Sleep never really wrote “songs”. They’ve always written states of mind that take you places. With this newest offering, Ben Jorgensen drags you into the most fragile one yet. This album feels like what happens when the dust settles and you finally must live with the ghosts. There are no metaphors or concept filters this time. Just grief, regret, and the strange way memory keeps replaying moments you thought were dead.
The album starts with “The Outer Ring”, and you can feel that familiar Armor musical pulse. There’s atmosphere, melodies are floating, but it never feels weightless. Then it drops into the ache of “Breathe Again”, where Jorgensen doesn’t soften the blow: “If I could fold up time / like a piece of paper / I would never have kissed you…” That’s not nostalgia, but someone trying to un-exist a moment to save his own future.
Where this album hits hardest is in how honestly it treats memory as something violent. Memories are sometimes not a scrapbook, but a parasite. Songs like “In Another Dream” and “What A Beautiful World” sound like alternate-universe versions of the same heartbreak, a loop you can’t crawl out of. Then comes “Ice On The Lake” and “Last Days” which offer quiet collapses, where the band leans into stillness harder than distortion. It all ends with “All The Best” which is the softest track on the record and maybe the most brutal thing he’s ever written. Acceptance doesn’t sound triumphant, but exhausted. He’s always had a way with lyrics and emotion and I’m here for it all.
There Is No Memory was recorded with producer/engineer Sam Guaiana (who has worked with Silverstein, The Devil Wears Prada, Between You & Me) at his studio. The band personally handled production and mixing. The end result is a top-notch release from a top tier elder emo band.
Armor For Sleep were the band that scored your sleepless nights in 2005. Now they’re scoring what happens when those feelings don’t go away when you’re older. The sound has evolved to an older, slower, less scene-anthem, more post-hurt clarity, but the ache is the same, just deeper. For me, the top three tracks that really hit are “What A Beautiful World”, “Always Daylight”, and “In Another Dream”. These feel nostalgic for me and take me to years gone by.
There Is No Memory is an album for people who understand that remembering is a kind of haunting. AFS don’t offer healing or an answer for it. They just tell the truth about the wounds we keep living in and we get to sing along with them about it.
