TOUCHÉ AMORÉ - Stage Four (10 Year Anniversary Edition)

When "Stage Four" came out in 2016, Touché Amoré were already one of the most beloved bands on the American post-hardcore circuit, backed by three blazing, direct albums. But "Stage Four" pushed the Los Angeles band to a whole new level, so much so that in hindsight it's regarded as their most accomplished and influential work, not least because of the harrowing circumstances that gave rise to it. It's a brutal, necessary journey through the stages of grief that frontman Jeremy Bolm went through after losing his mother, Sandy, to cancer in 2014, while the band was out on tour.

The "Four" of the title thus carries a double meaning: the band's fourth album, but above all the fourth stage of cancer, the terminal one. From the very first notes, the listener is thrown into a lyrical realism dominated by the void left by a phone call announcing the death of Bolm's mother, and by the regret of not having been there in that moment, all rendered with immense tension through fast riffs and lyrics that dissect guilt. It's a harrowing record that bleeds pain from every single note, the account of an unfillable void.

Memories of the past intertwine with the mother's belongings to be put back in order, reflections on faith, and flashes of the last trip to New York, recounted in the closing "Skyscraper", which features singer-songwriter Julien Baker. Despite the ever-present sonic aggression, a vulnerability clearly emerges that goes well beyond the conventions of post-hardcore, a record of devastating emotional weight that never tries to offer comforting answers. Instead, it's ready to lash the listener with tracks of tremendous power and intensity, such as "New Halloween", whose title comes from the day of that fateful phone call, and the blistering "Eight Seconds", which burns out in the space of a minute and a half.

Ten years on, the band has decided to celebrate "Stage Four" by releasing a lavish "10 Years Anniversary Edition" which, alongside the original tracklist - enriched by the excellent "Gather", pulled from the original sessions and already included on a previous deluxe edition - adds an alternative take for each of the eleven songs. There are six previously unreleased demo versions, which actually add little to the originals beyond a different mix ahead of the final polish handled by Brad Wood, two fiery live renditions, and three remixes, the standout being Kerry McCoy of Deafheaven's reworking of "Palm Dreams", along with a more subdued rendition of "Rapture".

Alongside this bonus material, which only partly reveals the real compositional process behind Touché Amoré's work, the band has decided to take the album on the road for an anniversary tour, playing the tracklist in full: the perfect chance to show just how much the album's power has grown over these ten years. The tour will also stop in Italy, with a date set for June 9th at Magazzini Generali in Milan.

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19/05/2026