On Friday, April 17th, nu metal/metalcore band “From Ashes to New” released their fifth studio album, Reflections, under Better Noise Music.

From Ashes to New (FATN) was formed in 2013 out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by rap vocalist Matt Bradberry, and has become a rising force in the modern rock/metal scene due to their modernization of classic-sounding nu metal popularized by bands like Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit in the late 90s and early 2000s.

The band’s last album, Blackout, which was released in 2023, was their biggest release to date. That was until the release of this new LP.

Reflections was released with four singles: New Disease, Drag Me, Villain, and Die For You. All four of them are doing insanely well with Drag Me being their fastest growing song ever, with the song getting over half a million plays in only a few days, a first for the band. All four singles also charted very well on Sirius XM Octane’s top 1o trending track list, showing how successful their new songs were.

Reflections features a very ambient-sounding production, with most of the songs feeling like they’re coming from the other side of a mirror inside a parallel world. This is a big change for the band as nothing they’ve released before has sounded anything remotely close to this, but in my opinion is pays off greatly given the vibe the album is going for.

Lyrically, the record is introspective. Die For You delves into themes of when’s enough in a relationship and when do you decide to pull the plug, while Villain touches on themes of not giving in to what other people view you as and the social anxiety that comes with personal image.

However, the album isn’t perfect, as revealed by the band, they initially had demoed 16 songs for their fifth album, but scrapped nearly all of them aside from two. This can be heard in the album as Drag Me, and New Disease stick out due to their different-sounding production, and while neither song is bad, it does make the album feel less cohesive and makes me wonder what it would have sounded like if the band had gone 100% in each sound’s direction.

Among the tracklist, my favorite songs were: New Disease, Villain, Drag Me, Die For You, and Your Ghost. Overall, I think Reflections is a strong 8.5/10.