Anberlin Currency: The Florida alt-rock institution hands the mic to a new voice and leans hard into themes of collapse, addiction, and the work of becoming someone else.
The music video for “NEVERAFTER,” directed by drummer Nathan Young and Jacob Moniz, opens Anberlin’s next chapter with visual and sonic weight. It’s the lead single from Anberlin’s CURRENCY, the band’s ninth studio album, arriving November 11 via Equal Vision Records, and it announces something that matters: Matty Mullins is now the voice of the band. Not a guest. Not a trial run. The full commitment.
Mullins isn’t new to Anberlin. He appeared on two songs from last year’s Vega, testing the waters, acclimating to the material. But CURRENCY is the statement piece, the first full-length that lives and breathes with him in the center. It’s a restart that asks hard questions about what happens when everything you’ve built yourself around collapses.
“The overall theme of CURRENCY is what happens after everything you built your identity on falls apart,” Mullins said. “It’s a journey through heartbreak, loss, addiction, shame, and the lies we tell ourselves. Instead of staying in the wreckage, it’s about finding the strength to face the truth, let go of what was killing you, and become someone new.” He continues: “I believe that healing doesn’t begin when the pain ends, it begins when you finally stop running from it.” These aren’t lyrics pulled from a press kit; they’re the album’s philosophical spine, mapped across eleven tracks that swing between cathedral-sized rock moments and intimate, reflective passages. The album was produced by Anberlin alongside Kellen McGregor of Memphis May Fire, and it mines previously unfinished material, giving Mullins room to leave his fingerprints all over the songs rather than simply inherit them.
Anberlin CURRENCY: The Weight of Change in GRAVITY
“GRAVITY,” the second single, is a masterclass in what happens when a band stops pretending immortality is the default. Mullins describes it as a song about time running out, about saying the things that matter before there’s no chance left. It’s a meditation on mortality wrapped in the kind of rock that makes you feel the weight of the words. The song sits beside “HIGHSTAKES,” another announced track, and “TRENCHES,” which brings in Switchfoot as a featured voice. That last collaboration isn’t incidental: Anberlin is joining Switchfoot on tour this fall, aligning their new era with an act that has spent decades mining faith, doubt, and the space between conviction and uncertainty.
A Band Built on Unfinished Rooms
There’s something deliberate about Anberlin working with previously unfinished material for this album. These aren’t new songs written for Mullins to perform. They’re half-formed ideas, abandoned sketches, material that had been sitting in the band’s archive waiting for the right voice. Mullins didn’t step into a finished framework. He finished the framework. He found what those songs were supposed to say and sang them into being. That process, more than any press release could, explains why this record feels like a genuine turning point rather than a lateral move or a revolving-door replacement.
The eleven tracks that make up Anberlin’s CURRENCY arrive November 11 via Equal Vision Records, the label that has housed much of the band’s catalog. Pre-orders are live now. This is a Florida alt-rock band that has been around long enough to know how to build a record, how to pace it, how to let silence do as much work as volume. Mullins brings a different instrument to that conversation, a different timbre, a different way of living inside the melody. What Anberlin has given him through CURRENCY is space to prove it matters.
