Armor For Sleep‘s Ben Jorgensen guides us track by track through the band’s new album ‘There Is No Memory’, which is out now.

‘”There Is No Memory’ is the fifth full length album of the project I’ve been calling Armor for Sleep since 2001. On board with me, and having been a member of the band since 2002, is my right-hand man Nash Breen on the drums, who in addition to being a phenomenal drummer helps keep the songs in check in the studio.

“This album is very personal and important to me. The one thing I keep telling my friends about this album is that while I hope this won’t be the last album we ever do, if for some reason it is, I would be at peace knowing this was our last one.

“Whereas our last album ‘The Rain Museum’ dealt almost entirely with one specific very dark chapter of my life, I found myself for this album taking stock of where my life is now as a whole while thinking specifically about one strange aspect of being human and how it continues to have a hold over my life (and I suspect most people’s lives too)- and that is the enigmatic yet all-consuming phenomenon that defines us known as memories.

“When writing this album I became fascinated with the notion that memories can hold such power over all aspects of who we are. What we’ve lived through shapes our personalities, the decisions we make, the masks we wear for others, the fears we carry with us. We like to think that we have complete control over our lives, that we can choose who we are and how we traverse through the world, but the experiences we’ve lived through can secretly be pulling the strings from some invisible height.

“I wanted to dive into the things I have been through to try and unwind what I felt like had its grips on me no matter where I tried to run to. But as I began I felt overwhelmed with sorting through it all. It felt like trying to unpack and parse through these sometimes painful memories was like running through quicksand. The more progress I thought I was making, the more I slipped into the past. How could memories from my past, remnants of long-gone experiences hold such power over me?

“While trying to clear my head by recording some demos at home for what would become this album, I was pushing my computer pretty hard. I wound up overworking the machine and it froze up… but before completely freezing, it spit out the following prescient error message across the screen… ‘THERE IS NO MEMORY’. I had pushed it too hard, and had apparently filled up the computer’s RAM so it had nowhere left to store any new bits of memory. But in that moment, I felt like my computer was speaking directly to me… and that we were experiencing the same problem together. I too felt like I had no more room left to store any new memories. I had this all-encompassing feeling like I had already been through so much, that I had already spent so many years in pain that I just didn’t have any more space for anything new.

“I also liked how the error message seemed to have a dual meaning. Maybe my computer was trying to cheer me up. “Don’t worry about the things you’ve been through that are holding you back. The past is in the past, ‘there is no memory’- it’s only an illusion.” Suffice it to say, it was pretty clear to me that that phrase would be the title of the album.

“I had to re-boot my computer. Once I did, it was again able to record the new music I was asking it to. I knew that I as well needed a reboot. For me, my reboot was dumping this information into an album to try and make sense of it all. Clearing my head of a lifetime of memories that I somehow needed to make peace with.

“This album really is about me coming to a place in my life where I feel like I have climbed a mountain and can look down both at the path that brought me here, and also ahead to the road down to the other side. It’s about acknowledging how hard and painful the road to here was but knowing that that road brought me to exactly where I am right now… to a point where I can look over the other side and see a whole new adventure. There is definitely some anger at how hard that path was, but I hope too there is some understanding that shows through that that path is what it had to be in order for me to be at this vantage point… a vantage point with a view that I really appreciate. 

“The album begins with hostility… heavy on the “woe is me”, but as it progresses songs become more about acceptance. The last song is me coming to terms with someone who hurt me far greater than anyone ever has in my life and reaching a point of forgiveness in my heart for what they did (however undeserved it probably is). That progression of the album moving from anger to acceptance is representative of the journey I have taken examining memories from my past and trying to piece them all together.”

The Outer Ring

“I always want to start our albums with songs that set the tone for the record and take the listeners to a new place. What better place to start a journey than to outer space? This song is about betrayal and how as glamorous as it might be to fight back, the truth for me is sometimes all I want to do is turn the other way and disappear in the face of being hurt. This song is about dealing with one such betrayal and just wanting to give up and vanish into the deepest darkest pits of the universe. And as I mentioned above, I wanted to start the album in the same way I started this journey of sorting through the things I have been through… which at the beginning was full of anger and messiness and void of meaningful answers.

“As a musical note, over the years we have been influenced by both delicate sounding bands and heavy bands. Recently I have been spending more time listening to heavier bands who use drop-tunings to help tell their stories. This song is in Drop A (the lowest tuning we’ve ever used), and a majority of the songs on this album are tuned down to Drop C. We just felt like that lower tuning helped reflect the tone of these songs.”

Breathe Again

“This song is about trying to wrap my head around that fact that there was someone who I thought would be there for me through thick and thin who instead used a moment when I was at my lowest point to hurt me deeper than I thought possible. This person has since moved on and there is really no reconciliation possible for us, so this song is my attempt at sorting through the situation and trying to find some resolution. I think at the end I attempt to forgive, but honestly the pain was just too great for me to really allow that.”

In Another Dream

“We released this song as a single last year (as I type this in July 2025), and I vaguely described what this song was about without going into too much detail. So may as well explain it here lest I repeat myself ad nauseam. This song is about losing a pet to an ex when we parted ways. After a breakup of mine, we decided I would keep one dog and she would keep the other. I know it sounds silly to write a song about missing a dog, but the dog I ultimately had to let go of really was my whole heart. I knew that most likely I would never see him again. I know “co-parenting” dogs could have been a possibility, but I did not want to re-open that connection with my ex so I ultimately had to let go. This song was about how painful that was (and still is) for me.”

I’d Set Fire

“After a pretty angsty and sad three songs, I felt like now would be a good point for a change of pace. This is a song about meeting my wife and how we both bonded over trauma that we’ve been through in our pasts. It’s about how sadness can actually bring two people together and believe it or not, can create love. I think that aspect of our story was worth sharing. “I’d set fire to the world for you just so you never lose the light in your eyes”. I thought that was a cool way of saying “us against the world”.”

Maybe The Sky Will Break

“This is a tough song for me. This one is about a friend I grew up with who died tragically far too young. In the song I envision myself back with him when we were just innocent kids before we knew what was waiting for us down the road. “Did you know you’re my favorite memory? You will always live in every piece of me.”

“When we recorded this song it was meaningful to me, but since the time of recording it has taken on a whole new meaning that I was not anticipating. Our long-time friend and booking agent Dave Shapiro died in a plane crash along with five other people on May 22, 2025. Dave was actually one of just a few people I had shared this album with only a little while before the crash. Upon listening to this song again after the accident, it became clear to me that I will always think of Dave along with my childhood friend when I hear and/or perform this song, and I dedicate it to Dave and the others on board that flight.”

What A Beautiful World

“I have had a history of winding up with the wrong people in my life. Thankfully I think I have learned some valuable lessons over the years and I think I am in a better place now. This song is about a toxic relationship that brought nothing but pain to my world. I have no idea why it took me so long to realise how unhealthy we were together, but I guess sometimes it’s easier to see these things in retrospect.”

A Sky Full Of Black Holes

“This song paints the image of a world where someone removes all the stars from the sky and replaces them with black holes. I had a relationship in my life where I felt like every bit of light that I had inside of me was systematically extinguished for the other person’s pleasure. There is a flair of anger but also somehow there is still sadness inside of me that things ended even though I knew it was through no fault of my own. “I prayed every day for just a ray of sunlight, prayed every day now I forget what you felt like”.”

Ice On The Lake

“This song is a metaphor for addiction. This is the most story-like of all the songs on the album. The story of the song is that I am walking along-side a frozen lake when suddenly I see someone in the middle trapped under the ice trying to break free. I crawl over the ice in hopes of helping free this person, but as this person comes into view I recognize who it is. And instead of helping them, it occurs to me that if I try to do so, they will pull me under the ice with them and we will both drown. So instead I turn away and leave them to drown despite how hard it is for me to do so.

“This metaphor for me is about helping out a friend who is struggling with addiction knowing that I have tendencies I need to be aware of too. I won’t get too specific here, but there was a situation where I had to distance myself from a friend for fear that I would wind up in a bad place as well. Despite the fact that it hurt me to do so, I had to put my health and wellness first.”

Always Daylight

“This song is about someone going through a traumatic time in their lives and me wanting to be there to support them. Unlike the character in ‘Ice On The Lake’ who I know will pull me under if I let them, the character in ‘Always Daylight’ is someone who I know can persevere despite being beaten down. I think about all the kids who come to our shows who talk to me afterwards and tell me that my lyrics have helped them see there are plenty of reasons to stay alive. This song goes out to all of them.”

Last Days

“This song is about imagining an ex as an old lady on her death bed and wondering if she will evaluate her life and think what would have been if we had stayed together. In the song I’m fighting with myself by saying “I know I shouldn’t care anymore”, but admitting that there is a part of me that still does and always will care. The chorus is “maybe there’s a part of me that’s lost inside a reflection of a memory”. I struggled for a long time after this particular bad breakup obsessing over the details of what went wrong. This song is me admitting that to myself. It all leads up to a big admission at the end of the song: “I would sell my soul not to care anymore”.”

All The Best

“So, with an album behind me of reconciling with all sorts of pain, this last song sums up my journey and how I wanted to end this chapter in my life. I wanted a song that starts off being introspective and builds up to some conclusion about what this whole thing has been about. The verses are about me facing my pain by myself and admitting that deep down I know I am still hurting from all of these memories that have built me into who I am. After a few stripped down verses, the song builds into the ending and what will conclude the album. The lyrics are “‘Cause up until my last breathe, I’m dreaming ‘till my world ends, I’m not sure what will happen, but I’m not scared of what comes next, I don’t know where you landed, but I hope you found some solace, and even though you shattered my world, I wish you all the best for whatever it’s worth”.

“It was really important for me to get to a point of forgiveness in my life. I have my own plans and my own goals to chase, I can’t keep feeling like these memories and this pain has control over me any longer. So I choose to let go and forgive so I can move on as the whole person that I know I can be.”