The room goes dim long before the first note lands. That’s the trick with a band like Downswing: they lead with atmosphere – smoke, shadow, a low hum in the rib cage – then hit you with the weight they’ve been carrying for years. Almost ten circuits around the sun, and now a full-length that feels less like release cycle and more like a vow. “We all kind of collectively came together and we’re like, okay, let’s do this one more time, let’s write the best record we possible can, and just put it all out there on the line,” says bassist Chris, the words landing like a match in a dark room.

The vow matters because it’s where they started. In 2016, it was studios and mood boards; it was a garage with dust in the rafters and a cheap Telecaster buzzing through an orange tube head. “They’re looking to start a hardcore band, and I’m like I’ve never listened to hardcore at all in my life, never. It was strictly pop-punk for me,” Chris remembers. He showed up anyway, jammed until something clicked, then watched the whole thing snowball: friends first, songs next, a first EP – Dark Side of the Mind – captured with voice memos and stubbornness. “We kind of just wrote our first EP in that garage together, just jamming out, writing, doing voice memos on our phone,” he says. There’s romance in that kind of beginning, that feral DIY throb that keeps a band’s heart beating even when the room gets bigger.

Harrison’s thread stitches back to the origin fire. Long before he fronted the band, he was somewhere in the crowd the very first time Downswing took a stage. “The first ever Downswing show was at a festival in Poughkeepsie, New York… ironically, my band opened the show, and Downswing’s first ever show, they played right after us,” he recalls. “To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever felt an entire room of people collectively anticipating something as much as that first Downswing set.” Fate – the word they later canonized as a song title during Harrison’s first recordings – had already started its quiet work. A year or two passed, then a test: come play guitar. Seven years later, he’s the voice cutting through the dark.

Even their name began as a shrug before it became a banner. “The name Downswing came from our old bass player… they have a song named Downswing. And it was kind of just a thing where we’re like, all right, we don’t want to overthink this,” Chris says. What followed was less a genre than a motion – “swing style” – a verb the band and its early faithful used to define the charge in the room. “We really prided ourselves in having a high energy show… big two steps and big breakdowns… So swing style almost just became a verb at that point… Or like a lifestyle almost,” he says. The term faded as the sound sharpened into metalcore, but for those who were there at the start, it’s a password, a handshake. “When people bring that up… that’s how we know like oh, this person has been with us since the start.”

If you’re new, there’s a front door: “I’m gonna say ‘Bound to Misery,’” Harrison offers, pointing to the Let This Life Devour You EP. “Even though that song is definitely more in the metalcore realm… it still encapsulates… the swing style energy… there’s two steps in the verses, the breakdown is huge, but the chorus is like in the singing, the melody.” Chris nods: “’Bound to Misery’ is a great bridge song between that hardcore and metalcore world… it’s more mature at capturing that metalcore energy, but still having the hardcore-esque vibes to it.” Think of it as the Rosetta Stone – the push and pull that defines who they are now.

The compass points that shaped them are telling. Harrison talks about discovering grandeur inside the underground: “The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance… brought it to this grand stage… that changed my viewpoint on like I could do this and still be able to potentially reach a level that I could only foresee in my dreams,” he says. Chris, meanwhile, tracks the ceiling shattering in real time: “Knocked Loose… bringing metalcore into the eyes of people who might not even know what metalcore is… It just… gives them home that like okay, we could play arenas… they’re is more to just playing dive bars and small music clubs.” When a genre starts looking up, bands like Downswing learn to aim higher.

All of that gravity condenses on the new record, And Everything Was Dark, a title that sounds like a stage direction and a diagnosis – an eclipse written in lowercase and lived in full. “There wasn’t… one specific moment,” Harrison says, answering where the name came from. “When you look out at the world… any news clip… there’s not a lot of… happy news stories… When everything that you see around you seems so negative… the people that are suffering… it’s just… sad.” He doesn’t flinch from the modern ache: “It’s almost isolating… finding your little bubble of happiness is so hard in a world that’s filled with darkness.” That’s the axis the record spins on: dread and defiance, doom-scrolling and the stubborn will to feel something anyway.

The band knows there’s “no real escape” from the feed. “You open your phone… trying to scroll through some silly shit… something super awful can pop up out of nowhere,” Harrison says. The album doesn’t offer a door out so much as a lantern forward: eleven tracks that move like weather across a ruined city, soft ash turning to sparks when the chorus hits.

Ask them to pick a favorite and watch them wince. “There’s a lot of really good songs on this record… next thing you know, we have 11 tracks… all of these could be a single,” Chris admits, before surrendering to the one that cuts closest to the bone: “‘Eternal’… it’s about what life could be like if this band didn’t work out.” He quotes the line that sits like a weight in the sternum: “If all my blood, sweat and tears, if this has all just led me here, I hope that it was worth it in the end.” It’s not performative despair; it’s the ledger every touring musician keeps in their head at 4 a.m. on another black ribbon of highway.

From the booth, the bruise is fresh: “From a vocalist perspective, it was Eternal,” Harrison says of the hardest song to track. “I remember hitting the final notes… I was starting to tear up in the booth… it’s just an emotionally resonant song that we all feel… we did that on the last day… hey we did it, but also like wow, listen to what we just did.” Live, the fear is less about perfection than transmission: “So many dynamics… if we don’t play it good live, people aren’t going to feel that emotion… that song is driven by that emotion of like this band could not be a thing today.”

Harrison’s own pick is a different kind of knife: “Letting Go… one of the best breakdowns on the record… a little more personal… at the end of a relationship, like just tell me that the whole time you were just letting go. Just let me go… I wanted… you to tell me that I wasn’t worth it. Tell me, just be honest.” Elijah from Cane Hill adds a spectral harmony to the heartbreak.

When guests appear elsewhere – Travis from Colorblind – they’re not tacked-on features; they’re companions in the dark. “Anytime we look for a guest spot… we usually have that part written already, vocally, with lyrics, yes,” Chris explains. “But it’s always nice to give that person the option… if you want to change it, let’s talk about it… we always really want to have our friends on the songs… it’s like friends helping friends out.” The songs expand without losing shape.

On the road, the new material behaves like weather. “Eventually when we play ‘No God to Me’… I think that will have a really good reaction,” Chris says. For now, the set opens with an ambush: “We’re also playing ‘Emptiness Remains’… that song starts with just Harrison screaming. There’s no instruments… as soon as Harrison starts… and that initial breakdown intro riff kicks in… people who are maybe standing at the back of the room… all look over and be like, whoa, wait a minute, what is going on right now?” The body’s first response is always to turn toward impact.

The grind behind the impact is ordinary and brutal. Cheap meals. Long drives. A clock that never resets. “Being on the road isn’t easy… missing events, being away from family and friends… a couple weeks at home in between tours… it takes a toll on you mentally,” Chris says. “Most of the time we’re driving until three, four o’clock in the morning… the lack of sleep also is definitely not healthy.” These aren’t complaints; they’re receipts. The payoff is the moment the lights go out and the room inhales as one.

There’s another evolution happening just beneath the sonics: the death of the do-it-alone myth. After sour label years, Downswing had hardened around independence; two EPs released on their own, pride as armor. Then Monarch called. “From the moment we started talking to them… we always have a game plan… it feels like a family behind you that actually wants to push your music,” Chris says. Harrison spells the unlearning out: “Accepting help from the people that genuinely give a shit about us… unlearning how to be an independent band and kind of accepting help from other people at times.” Chris doesn’t sugar the industry: “There are really bad people… people who just want to steal from you… but not everyone’s like that… as long as you can tell the difference… it changes your outlook… Monarch changed my view.”

Letting go, it turns out, isn’t only for heartbreak songs. It’s for genre cages, too. “Unlearning the fact that you don’t have to follow trends, and you don’t have to put yourself in this box that used to be Downswing,” Chris says. Harrison picks up the thread: “Without conforming to a specific audience, we were able to just write what we wanted… what we wanted to hear our band sound like.” There will always be a few voices in the back yelling for “the old stuff,” but the band has already chosen the road ahead. “We’re the ones out here missing time away from our family and friends… if you don’t like it, you don’t have to listen to it,” Chris says. “And I think at this point, we are gaining more new listeners than we are losing old listeners.” Harrison doesn’t hesitate: “A thousand percent.”

In the end, the dreams remain beautifully human. “Grow our audience… share music experiences with people,” Chris says. “Hopefully… play festivals like Louder Than Life and Welcome to Rockville… and I want to tour Europe.” Harrison’s hope feels like the album distilled to a single line: “Things can be bad, things are bad, they don’t always have to be.”

That’s the charge humming through And Everything Was Dark: not a happy-ending glow, but a stark light that insists on seeing. It’s the sound of a band walking through a blackout with their hands out, feeling for the door, deciding together to keep moving. If there’s comfort here, it’s earned. If there’s peace, it’s brief and bright as a match. And when the room finally inhales and the first note lands, what you hear is not escape; it’s endurance. Downswing, still here. Still louder than the dark. And hopefully “Eternal.”