Seattle-based Atomic Pines blends post-hardcore’s raw intensity with the introspective sensibilities of indie-folk, all underscored by a progressive edge. Their latest EP, Sunlight Lost in a Portal, offers a deeply personal meditation on displacement, change, and life’s most difficult reckonings. Frontman Collin Magdaz’s battle with cancer and the journey through its aftermath permeate the EP, lending a weighty emotional resonance to each track. The band’s ability to merge gritty energy with moments of quiet reflection creates a striking contrast, highlighting the fragility of existence and the unavoidable confrontation with life’s harshest truths.
For the first time, the band collaborated as a cohesive unit, co-producing alongside Timothy Robert Graham, with mixing by Sean O’Keefe (Fall Out Boy, Hawthorne Heights). The result is a wildly disparate, powerful blend of grit and emotional depth, tapping into the tumultuous experience of transformation—both personal and shared.
“Sunlight Lost in a Portal is the most honest music I’ve ever made,” says Magdaz. “The songs on this EP are part of a personal reckoning, facing things I’ve tried to avoid for too long. Working with the full band brought a new kind of energy that pushed the songs to a deeper level. It’s raw and it’s vulnerable, and I’m excited for people to hear something this real.”
The album opens with the brilliant Twin Creeks, a serene summer scene brought to life through vivid natural imagery—dew on leaves, foxglove in bloom—juxtaposed with darker elements of urban decay, from drug dealers to drag racers. This tranquility is shattered by a cosmic disturbance, a portal tearing through time and space, hinting at decay and the inevitable end of seasons, casting a lingering sense of loss over the track. With its wild prog rock synth arpeggios and passionate vocals, it brings to mind 1969 Bowie singing about 1976 matters.
Darkness follows, delving into fear, guilt, and mortality with a more acoustic folk approach. The song paints a portrait of grappling with inner demons, haunted by decay and the looming threat of self-destruction. As nightfall approaches, the speaker faces the terrifying possibility of becoming the very monster they fear, yet finds solace in the enduring connection to a loved one. Even in death, the bond remains, promising to haunt and linger, a presence that refuses to fade, symbolizing both love and loss. This Americana-tinged song brings to mind the songwriting of Lee Hazlewood, Arcade Fire, and Deerhunter.
Ghosts of Indiana moves into rapid-fire 90s alternative rock territory with its blistering guitar, pounding drums, and screaming vocal delivery, painting a grim picture of industrial decay and personal defeat. Dust, smoke, and a crow with a “crown of shame” evoke desolation, as the speaker is weighed down by past failures and a bleak, seemingly inescapable future. Trapped in a “dead end town,” the song reflects the oppressive pull of broken dreams, with steel mills and thunder looming as symbols of crushing inevitability. The imagery captures the suffocating sense of fate closing in, a life resigned to obscurity, where ambition falters and hope fades under the relentless weight of time and failure. It is hard to not feel emotional stirring with this one.
Listen to Sunlight Lost in a Portal below, and order here
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