For as long as they have been about, Boundaries have been the band people go to for guaranteed emotional release.

But when it came to figuring out what their next move should be in the form of their fourth full-length, life had different plans for them. ‘Yearning: The unbeautiful after’ is a record dedicated to Dave Shapiro, Kendall Fortner, and Emma Huke, who passed away last year, and strong feelings are grief are prevalent throughout it bludgeoning, caustic, emotional runtime. But there is also glimmers of light peaking through from behind the clouds.

Because at the core of this astonishing ode to heavy music, there is a command for you to keep on going. To make the most of the life you have, because it is the only one you have. Strive for greatness, look out for each other, be the person you always hoped you would be. Because to sit in the misery is to let it win.

To find out more about this process, Rock Sound sat down with vocalist Matthew McDougal for an honest look at what it means to question everything you once knew.

How are you feeling about what this record ended up looking and feeling like? What was the route you took to get here, considering where the last album took you?

Matthew: It’s one thing to know what we want to do, and it’s another trying to communicate it in a way that it feels like people will understand. You don’t want to be overly cautious with the listener, because that’s not how you’re supposed to make stuff. You’re supposed to make it because it’s what you have to do. But you also don’t want to present it in a way where everyone goes and listens to the record and no one gets it. It’s a very tightrope to walk.

I think the last record, ‘Death is Little More’, was a really big exercise for myself in trying to write absolutely anything I thought of. There’s always some amount of internal hesitancy and policing of, ‘Is this going to make sense in a Boundaries song? Is this too much like other stuff? Are people not going to identify with it?’ I even have a hard time writing songs that lyrically deviate from the stuff I usually write about, the things I feel like I’m good at writing about, which are very emotionally heavy topics. Topics relating to interpersonal relationships, introspection within myself. Anytime I try to do something that isn’t that, I always feel like it’s less than or worse because I don’t feel like I’m as good at it. But the only way to defeat that self-imposed roadblock is to try it anyway.

So, that’s what I spent a lot of time doing on the last record. Even if I don’t think I’m going to do it well, I’m going to do it. And the record came out, people liked it, and it felt like maybe a lot of these limits are just in my head. So, with those restraints gone, there was a lot less pressure in that sense for this latest record, because I no longer felt there were things we were and were not allowed to do.

For this one, I want to be more intentional and plant the flag. Let’s do one that sounds like an Emmure song. Let’s do one where it feels like Saosin the whole time. Let’s claim every part of the genre as our own, and then moving forward, no matter what we put out, you’re going to have a hard time not understanding how it makes sense for us to do that. Because a record ago, two records ago, we did whole songs that sounded like this.

What has it been like taking notice of other lanes in that manner? It is very easy to carve out something for yourself and stay there, but moving around with such confidence must have been an interesting process.

Matthew: The more tours we do, the more we have the benefit of doing that because we’re under the whole umbrella of the genre. We get to do tours with a lot of different bands because we can make sense on a lot of different bills. And within that, the audience feels like they want to put bands in lanes. And I get it because music is this weird, esoteric thing where genres are a fucking figment of a guy just trying to describe something. There are no real rules about what a band can or cannot sound like, but people try to put bands into terms they understand, in terms that are easy to share with their friends. So, it is, and has been, a goal of ours to apply ourselves to the metalcore umbrella because that is what we are, but also to deviate in ways that show why this genre is so cool: it’s a bit of everything.

I don’t see myself identifying with the community that I have identified with my whole life up to this point. So I don’t want this band to be part of that, either. I want it to be whenever you put on a song, it’s a dice roll. It’s not always going to sound the same. It’s not going to sound like the first four before it or the next four after it.

I have no issue with people that don’t make stuff the way we make it. I understand the privilege and the position we’re in: because we’ve always made weird stuff, we’re allowed to keep doing it. But if it’s in your core, and if it’s who you are, if you’re thinking ‘Not only do I need to create, but I need to create something like this’, then it just comes out of you naturally.

There’s a lot of talk about drive on this record, and that feeling is often rooted in positivity. But a lot of what has also inspired this record has come from tragedy. What has it been like dealing with that yin and yang?

Matthew: It’s difficult. I’m not a very positive guy, but I do believe in people as individuals, and that’s something that I tried to make more prevalent in this record. To empower the individual and to be part of something greater than yourself. I think that’s what I aspire to be. That’s what makes me get up every day; to be the best version of myself, so that I may then take it and be something greater than myself. And so there are inklings of that throughout the record because I think that’s part of what I’m trying to talk about throughout it.

Something that’s very identifiable, at least in America, is that you grow up and your parents tell you you have to go to college, or you won’t be able to get a job, and you won’t be able to make a living. You go to college, you get married, you start a family. Very immediately, life sets upon you its rules, and if you don’t do anything about it, then they’re just going to suffocate you. I was lucky enough to reject these things, make my own way, and figure it out to whatever extent I have. And so I wanted this record to have some echo of that era of my life. It can be hard to reject those things when it’s the only thing around you telling you you’re going to fuck your life up, and so I wanted just like an inkling of hope in the record that is, if you have it within you to reject these things, things will work out. You don’t even necessarily need to know what you want; you need to know what you don’t want. Like let’s start there, and I think the record starts there sort of thematically.

And then as the record moves forward and concludes, it finds its way through more of the tragedy that surrounds this record and the last year of the band. Life is so violent and unforgiving, and I very suddenly found myself in a position where people I thought I was going to have a lot more time with, I did not. I had to come to terms with whether I was okay with that. And if I wasn’t, what was I going to do about it? How is it going to affect me moving forward?

But the songs on this record that are about that tragedy, that are about my friends that are no longer here, I try to pay respect and not make it about me and how I feel, but about how they impacted my life and how I’m going to go forward without them. Trying not even to be positive, but show, well, what’s the other option? You have to continue. You have to keep going.

There are inevitabilities in life, but sometimes that inevitability arrives in a different shape. And you either sink or swim when that is thrown upon you, and most of the time sinking isn’t an option.

Matthew: Either you survive the very sudden stealing of your loved ones, or you separate yourself from people, and you become a hermit, and you don’t let people in. Then that way, when people do pass away, when people move on, when people’s lives take them in other directions, you don’t have to feel bad anymore because you were never that close to them anyway. The statement of the record is more or less that that is no way to live. That is not an appropriate reaction to tragedy. As difficult as it is to confront these things, it’s necessary if you’re going to have any substantial, meaningful life.

Rock Sound: That often gets lost in the cracks when it comes to heavy music as well. Where noise, harshness, and overwhelming heaviness disguise an actual unburdening of feeling. Anger is one solution, but it doesn’t always solve what you need it to.

Matthew: And I feel like I’ve made those records already. I feel like I already did the unbridled and unsympathetic – more or less just tantrum music. I had things within me that I wasn’t dealing with properly, that I didn’t know how to deal with, and I didn’t know how to explain or verbalise. If I were still making those records, I wouldn’t be doing the self-study to improve these aspects. It’s just a well that I go to out of comfort, and there are aspects- there are inklings of that type of stuff on this record, for sure, because that is part of what this band’s identity is. The almost absurd exemplification of emotion is to take something to its highest, most hyperbolic point and express it that way rather than not express it at all. It’s something you often find in emo music. It’s something you find in like screamo. In things that are very adolescent and youthful, just a couple of kids and they’re mad at the world, and they don’t know why. Even if it’s not the way we’re going to do all our songs, there should still be some aspect of it in our music.

Rock Sound: At the end of the day, these are real emotions expressed by real people, and you have found a manner in expressing them in a way that feels right and feels helpful. And when that is the core of what you’re doing, everything else is just noise, really. And if people want to be a part of that with you, they are welcome; if they don’t, maybe this was never for them in the first place.

Matthew: This music should confront the listener in some way because that’s what this genre is supposed to do. I think the genre only benefits the more people that are involved in it. But I think some of those people aren’t listening to heavy music because they want to be emotionally confronted or challenged by what they’re listening to. I aim to continue finding people who want to be involved. But my goal is to keep making stuff that means something to me.