Legendary independent New York-based rock label Equal Vision Records and Armor For Sleep are excited to announce the Friday, November 7 release of There Is No Memory, the seminal New Jersey post-hardcore band’s brand new studio album (pre-save, pre-add, pre-order HERE). The first offering since 2022’s acclaimed The Rain Museum, There Is No Memory was recorded with Sam Guaiana (Silverstein, The Devil Wears Prada, Between You and Me) and is a collection of songs that force the listener to question the very nature of their existence, of what makes us the people we are. While The Rain Museum was a record written in the throes of the dissolution of the Armor For Sleep frontman Ben Jorgensen’s eight-year marriage and his subsequent divorce, its setting was more fictional and metaphorical. By comparison, There Is No Memory is much more literal, much more grounded in the real world, and much closer to the bone.

“Breathe Again,” the album’s new single, is a song about trying to come to grips with the fact that there was someone who you thought would be there for you through thick and thin who instead used a moment when you were at your lowest point to hurt you deeper than you 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,” Jorgensen says. “I think at the end, I attempt to forgive, but honestly the pain was just too great for me to really allow that.” Watch the music video for “Breathe Again” below.

More about "There Is No Memory":

“When you're going through a traumatic experience — and are actually underwater in an event such as a divorce — it’s very difficult to have any kind of perspective on anything other than that one thing that's consuming all aspects of your life,” Armor For Sleep’s Ben Jorgensen said. “‘The Rain Museum’ was written right after I went through this crazy life event. For this one, in contrast, I'm higher off that waterline, and I have a broader perspective now. I’ve been taking stock of my life as a whole, and so I found myself thinking and writing about the strange experience of memories and the power they have over all facets of who I am.”

If that statement doesn’t give it away, one listen to this record will. There Is No Memory is actually punctuated by it — it’s an album steeped in life (and lives) lived, in recollections of the past, in the absence of what once was, in the lacuna brought on by the memories of what had been. Jorgensen is well aware of the irony of the title, but it’s an intentional part of the record’s narrative. He knew he wanted to write an album about memories, and while he was demoing the tracks at home, something happened that felt, if not quite like fate, then at least like it was connected to what he was writing about.

“While working on these demos one day, my computer crashed. But right before completely freezing, it spit out an error message on the screen that said: 'THERE IS NO MEMORY',” he recalls. Initially, Jorgensen’s reaction was philosophical with a hint of despair. But then it made him think even more deeply about the record he was trying to write.

From the moment the crackling, fizzing energy of “The Outer Ring” kicks it off all the way through to closer “All The Best,” you’re transported deep into the wormholes of Jorgensen’s memories and the multiple parallel worlds they create on this record. Yet as much as it’s a collection of individual memories, there’s also a narrative and thematic through-line. As the album progresses — via the bitter regret of “Breathe Again” ('If I could fold up time/Like a piece of paper/I would never have kissed you/This wouldn’t exist to ruin our lives’ he spits) and the urgent desperation of “In Another Dream,” the hopeless helplessness of “What A Beautiful World” and the unfettered emotional vulnerability of both “Ice On The Lake” and “Last Days” — the mood shifts. It might begin with self-flagellating hostility but it ends with the hushed, heart-torn “All The Best” in a place of quiet acceptance and peace.

Each song is its own poignant and pointed reminder that — however vague, however unreliable, however distant — memories can contain as much, if not more, power than the person, place or feeling that they’re echoes of. In fact, they can haunt us, control us, and change the way we think, act and feel, not just in the present moment but for the rest of our lives. ‘Isn’t it odd the way/We can give our lives to someone else/And mean nothing to them one day?’ Jorgensen sings on that final song, a line as brutal as it is beautiful and which captures the contradictions that underline this collection of songs.

“It's an exploration of me wondering how much of my life is controlled by what I've been through,” Jorgensen summarizes. “And trying to unpack all sorts of different memories, whether they're from relationships I've been through, betrayals, addictions, friends I’ve lost along the way. It's me wondering if I am just the collective sum of all the things I’ve lived through or if there is a me underneath it all who can still choose his own fate.”