SPILL FEATURE: BETWEEN THE LIGHT AND THE LEAVING – HELD. ON THEIR DEBUT ALBUM ‘GREY’

BETWEEN THE LIGHT AND THE LEAVING

HELD. ON THEIR DEBUT ALBUM GREY

Held.’s debut record, GREY, is the kind of record that thrives on the interplay of shadows and self-discovery. When one builds this kind of record from that kind of energy, this world of internal turmoil, and thresholds that had been fostered for years, became GREY. Between heaviness, restraint, and confessions and concealment, and the battle between what once was and where you were going, becomes a quest that doesn’t ask for clarity so much as it was a battle cry for openness – even if that openness felt like bare feet standing on cold concrete, that stinging, pin-prick against the soles, unavoidable and painful. Muted, reflective, but charged with an undercurrent of something electric and unspoken, GREY isn’t an album that wants to posture: the talent behind this group is proof enough of the status behind their debut. For vocalist, Douglas Robinson, this was about proving something beyond legacy, and the excitement and uncertainty of what lies beyond it. This is the liminal space where GREY sits, where Held.’s musical energy inhabits so naturally.

“There was no hesitation with anything. I think we all, in our own subconscious way, felt we had something to prove to ourselves. We were coming from these two other bands, including my time in Night Versus. Everyone had an internal mission: to show that those other bands are not our limit. We wanted to raise the bar. We were driven to make something meaningful because we get to speak only as ourselves in this band. With The Sleeping, it’s very democratic. Everyone has a piece of the pie. Sometimes, though, there are too many strong opinions, making decisions tough. That dynamic shapes The Sleeping,” says Douglas Robinson. “With Josh [Eppard] and Coheed [and Cambria], that band is a bigger beast. Their decision-making is different, but I can’t speak to that. This band has three members—three like-minded people who trust each other. We lean on one another as individuals and as a group. We wanted to make something individualistic to who we are, both as people and as a unit. There weren’t hesitations or restraints when writing. Our goal was to outdo ourselves in every way. We aimed to explore without getting stuck in overthinking. We’ll work on things as needed, but our intention is always to fire from the heart.”

Writing from a raw place of truth means braving the in-betweens within that honesty. In this suspended soundscape, their emotional center tested the limits of writing from that space. Writing from certainty can feel less genuine. Authenticity can show up in many ways, and each truth depends on its context. GREY began to form when they stopped pretending to have all the answers for their grief and ambiguity. GREY became the space for their intimate emotions: doubt, longing, anger, and softness. What started as many circling truths became the theme of this record.

“A lot of The Sleeping draws on past experiences. As I grow, I realize I need to write more from my internal state, not just experiences. It sounds cliché, but the world is crazy now. Our minds handle a lot of stress. Social media and the internet are useful tools, but they can hurt and negatively affect your mental state. I’m not just talking about social media for bands, but the internet in general, and how media shapes perception. These factors caused me to break down. I have severe anxiety. So, I felt I needed to speak about it, therapeutically, for myself,” Robinson admits.

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“Josh and Sal are completely honest musicians. We all follow each other’s lead to play from the heart. This makes the music honest because we feed off one another. We work well because we tune into our emotions—through playing, attitude, and personality. Josh and Sal are among the most individualistic players I’ve met. I’ve been lucky to play with many like that. But our like-mindedness creates honesty. We lift, guide, and challenge each other. For me, that honesty shows up in lyrics because I can only be true to myself. I needed to write about what’s inside me. If I don’t, I feel alone despite having a therapist and other tools for self-improvement. But music is what helps me most, so I always write and create. The album title comes from the lyrics, but through Josh’s eyes. He named the record before knowing all the lyrics. That shows how much energy connects us. He felt what I felt based on the themes and lyrics. He chose the record’s name and the title track, “GREY.” That shows our unity—thinking the same, letting honesty guide us, and following each other’s lead.”

This allowed the band to articulate a kind of heaviness that doesn’t always come from distortion and aggression. It’s emotional, almost bodily. There was a lot of unresolved inner turmoil, and the band was sifting through it all. Grief that didn’t bear a name, anger that didn’t know where to land, and the kind of loneliness that manifests when you are surrounded by people. They didn’t set out to make a heavy record; the weight was already within them, and these songs merely gave that gravity a form. Vulnerability was not meant to be comfortable for them, but it was the only thing that kept the record honest. It was the only thing that gave them the courage to stop hiding and reveal a side of themselves that their storied careers with other bands had never really begun to uncover. With that uncovering, there is a sense of shedding versions of themselves that would no longer fit in the story they were trying to tell. Their respective bands had already built a legacy that instilled a sense of perfectionism: the idea that they needed to prove themselves outside the luminaries who had defined them both, or the fear that this new project would tank before it began. Once they let that go, these songs would reveal and descend into a kind of vulnerability and truth that only this chapter of their lives could unveil: that with age comes a new kind of wisdom and truth that sometimes exists outside your comfort zone.

“Even though there’s a mission, I never see it as work. It’s more of a drive, and I lose myself in it. This is the room where I wrote and played, always in the same chair. I recently wrote about this chair and that time. I was working a terrible job I hated. The toxic environment depressed me. I wondered if this was my future. The Sleeping was always more selective, doing what we wanted. Still, I feared music would only be a side thing, and I’d be stuck working a miserable job. That job changed me. I got involved in workplace drama I didn’t care about. Eventually, I thought, “fuck all of that, I don’t care about this anymore. Money does not make me happy,” he admits.

“I need to really make this band happen and be the best I need to be. Like, stand up to Josh and Sal’s level, you know. So I sat in this chair, and kind of changed my whole life around, and the work kind of disappeared because it was almost like an escape, which it always is for me. Music is an escape for me in any part of my life, good or bad. I love just going off into another realm, and I was able to really focus on that with this band and this record for myself. It was, in a way, the drive I needed, and it helped me. I was like, okay, this is my last shot, you know, in my brain, even though that might not necessarily be the case. It has to be what I need it to be, or else I don’t stand a chance. I don’t feel like I necessarily belong here as it is. I’m speaking on my side, being the lyricist for both bands. From all of this, I think this record is more self-aware. I’m more self-aware, for better or worse, and I think as I continue writing with The Sleeping and this band, each record becomes more self-aware. It’s not so much the childlike angst as the angst of a young man. I have a different life. I’m married, and I have animals that are my children. I have a great apartment I live in and all these great things in my life, but there’s the self-awareness of what’s going on inside. I think I didn’t have that full self-awareness before, or at least the awareness I needed to approach this band lyrically. I think this experience tethers you, but also lets you disconnect from everything you’ve done in a different way; it’s almost like a platform for you to jump and dive into other things.”

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Photo Credit: Nick Karp