Anberlin has announced plans to release one final album and complete a farewell world tour before ending the band’s 12-year run.
The Florida rock band shared the news Thursday in a video tracing its history from a group of friends with ambitious plans to a touring act with six studio albums and an international following. Rather than allowing Anberlin to slowly disappear between increasingly infrequent releases, the members said they wanted to end deliberately and while they were still proud of the music they were making.
“We don’t want to fade out,” the band said in the announcement. “We want to end with a celebration of what we’ve accomplished and all that we’ve been through.”
Anberlin will spend 2014 recording and releasing its seventh studio album before taking the new music on one final world tour. The band has not announced the album’s title or release date, but it is expected this summer.
The project will also bring Anberlin back to Tooth & Nail Records, the label that released the band’s first three albums: Blueprints for the Black Market, Never Take Friendship Personal and Cities. Those records established Anberlin within the alternative and post-hardcore scenes before the band moved to Universal Republic for 2008’s New Surrender.
The farewell announcement comes a little more than a year after the release of Vital, one of the band’s heaviest and most electronically adventurous records. An expanded edition, Devotion, followed in October with additional songs, remixes and live material.
Anberlin has not yet revealed the complete farewell itinerary, though plans include appearances on the 2014 Vans Warped Tour and dates in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Europe, Australia and parts of Asia.
Twelve years is long enough for a band to accumulate several different generations of fans, each convinced the album that introduced them is objectively the best one. Anberlin is giving all of them one final record and one final opportunity to make that case from the front row.
Watch the band’s announcement below.