"This is it. We love you guys so much," Jon Simmons declared, his voice cracking on the last few words. The roar from the hometown embraced him and gave him a moment to find his… composure. "We're Balance and Composure from Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Thank you for…" and as his last words get lodged in his throat, another surge of cheers carries them away into 'I Tore You Apart In My Head' after which the band depart the stage at The Fillmore in Philadelphia, believing it would be the last time.

The curtain had come down on the band just a few months after the familiar but always depressing sight of a band putting out an iPhone notes screenshot statement. "Due to some internal and personal discussions, we were unable to decide our fate as a band," it read both diplomatically and cryptically.

"I never wanted the band to end in the first place," Jon confesses, now on the brink of Balance and Composure's return with 'with you in spirit'. It comes as no surprise for anyone who saw those final shows. The forlorn figure he cut each night. Choking on his goodbyes. This was not one of those "mutual agreement" type deals.

"I knew the guys needed a break," he admits. "So I thought it was done for good when we broke up."

So he took some time. He went to therapy for a year, which really helped. He released a solo record under the name Creeks. He even wrote some songs for the band, not knowing but hoping that one day they'd see the light of day.

"A lot of the songs I was just writing for myself, and they felt like Balance songs, but I just never knew we'd release them or record them. So I just kept them. I kept a bunch of them in my back pocket just in case the guys wanted to get back together."

In a cruel way, it was a good thing that less than a year into breaking up, the whole world stopped for the pandemic. That enforced global pause found other members of the band reevaluating their lives, and the idea of reuniting started to niggle at them. Guitarist Erik Petersen sent a message about jamming for fun, and it quickly snowballed into a full-blown reunion.

Not everyone got the message, though. The returning Balance and Composure comes with Dennis Wilson, formerly of Saves the Day, on drums in place of Bailey Van Ellis.

According to Jon, Dennis's addition "has created a whole new dynamic which is really positive. It's just fun now. I didn't realise before how there was such a negative energy all the time," he explains.

"I think that's what burnt this out in the past. We weren't having fun anymore. It felt like a job. We were burned out, and there was unspoken tension; it's like a whole new experience. It's just complete positivity with Dennis, who's down to try everything. He has a good attitude, and it's fun again, and it feels like we're like teenagers again starting the band."

His glowing review of the new drummer is a double-edged sword for what the band dynamic was that led to the break-up and the now cut-adrift Bailey.

"I don't want to speak bad," he caveats, "but things were just like difficult, and he would try to get his way with everything, which just made it not fun for the creative process."

"I would say 'Light We Made' was more what he wanted to do. Not everything, like I have songs on that record too, but he just made it not fun creatively, and I just felt like we weren't using our whole potential," he admits.

With just that one change, they find themselves rebalanced and recomposed and, in Jon's words, they've reached "the next level".

Their jam sessions evolved into writing. Thanks to those readymade songs Jon has kept aside, the outlines of their return album quickly took shape. They enlisted Will Yip for production duties. Reinvigorated, everything was falling into place quite quickly with Jon spearheading the sprint to get this new record complete. Unfortunately, the rest of the band needed to pump the brakes.

"It was a really slow process, which drove me crazy a little bit," Jon admits.

With the singer living in Los Angeles and the rest of the band having 9-5 jobs elsewhere, they couldn't dedicate three weeks to making a record like they would have done in the past. Instead, it was the longest they've ever spent making an album. Rather than being a snapshot of a moment, with the time afforded to making this record, it became about the journey rather than the destination.

"I got to really rethink things," Jon says. "Like there were plenty of verses and songs that were totally different melodies, lyrics. There are some songs I've rewritten like five or six times. I've never had the opportunity before."

A marathon, not a sprint, this album became the most labour-intensive record they've ever made. "We really poured everything we had into this. Everyone says that for every record they do, but I didn't sleep for months. I feel like I was just constantly trying to change things and make it as profound and as good as I possibly could," he adds.

There was still a bit of impatience, which is what ultimately led to the release of 'Too Quick to Forgive', the pair of songs they dropped in April 2023 to announce Balance and Composure's return. The idea had been Will Yip's, possibly as a way of satiating Jon's excitement, to release the first two tracks they'd completed for the album.

Perhaps not the original plan, but by releasing 'Savior Mode' and 'Last To Know', they created a bridge linking the old and new Balance and Composure. While those tracks have themes that root them in 'with you in spirit', "I kind of feel like they left off 'Slow Heart'," Jon points out.

In the 18 months following that release, Balance and Composure returned as a live force and completed work on their fourth full-length album, 'with you in spirit'.

What is immediately obvious on this album is the change in tone from where Balance and Composure started when they first finished the two songs that made up 'Too Quick to Forgive'. This album has a suffocating, oppressive blanket over it. "It's dense," Jon describes.

"This is always how we've wanted to sound," he continues. "I feel like I don't really love happy music. When I try to write it, I feel like a fraud. I don't know why that is. I feel like most songs you hear on the radio or something, they're sad if you listen to the lyrics and stuff. So even if we have an upbeat song like 'Saviour Mode' or, on this record, 'A Little of Myself', it sounds really upbeat, but the lyrics are probably the saddest or darkest yet. It's like a complete juxtaposition of how the song sounds and what it is actually.

"This record is the sound we've always wanted to create. We always like moody, brooding music, and I think this is the perfect snapshot of that."

From the first notes of 'Restless' with its transcendent vocal effects, there is an unsettling tension draped over the sound.

It feels like a low dark cloud over the album, which is matched by Jon's songwriting and is aptly captured on the album's artwork, a photo which the songwriter took at a family reunion in South Carolina. He proudly calls it "the best picture I've taken", and it sure is a beauty. With his nephew and niece playing in the foreground and a pink sunset being interrupted by an incoming black cloud, it's one of those pictures that says a thousand words.

"We were watching a storm come in. That's what you see in the distance," he describes. "And if you want to know what's going on behind the scenes, the kids were really excited about the storm, like really, really excited, but all the adults were kind of worried and fearful.

"I thought that's a cool little story with the photo, but it says something I feel."

That sort of foreboding, anxious feeling plagues the songwriting in a beautiful way that feels all-encompassing thanks to the heavy sound they've created. 'Cross To Bear', the first single, brims with sustained threat. "I want you looking over your shoulder," he sings. When he turns those feelings onto his own anxieties on 'Lead Foot', an acoustic-led track which acts as a refresher after the punishing sound of 'Believe the Hype', the lyrics take on a new life as he wrestles with that which he cannot control.

"Something feels wrong in my chest," he cries as the song begins to build. "It's about the anxiety of worrying about a loved one who is not taking care of themselves and doesn't really have regard for their own life," he explains, and it's an idea he continues on the album's title-track, which closes out the record.

Worrying about what he cannot control is a big part of his writing on this album, and a lot of that comes down to a question of his faith. Having grown up a Christian, he's watched travesty after travesty unfold in recent years, and, on 'Closer To God', he takes issue with the "thoughts and prayers" response to school shootings which have terrorised his country. "Where's your maker hiding now?" he questions on the track.

'Any Means', which Jon labels as his "Radiohead-style song", also finds his God in his crosshairs. "It's kind of angry at God but trying to understand at the same time," he reasons, explaining that the song is about the struggles in life and wanting the perfect existence that his belief had once told him was possible.

Despite the bleak subject matter, neither Jon nor the band are defined by it. "I'm a happy person in real life, but I think I could work my shit out through art and music. I feel like it's really important for me to have an outlet," Jon says.

"Since the band broke it up, a lot of shit has happened in my life personally and the other guys' lives. Life's been kind of hard.

"It's not like we're trying to set out and be a bummer. It's just you've got to get out what's inside of you sometimes; that's just how I operate when it comes to creating music. It's just an outlet for me and just a way to express the other side of me that most people don't really see."

That disconnect between the everyday Jon Simmons and the persona he adopts as the singer of Balance is explored further on 'Sorrow Machine'. It's a bold exploration of the role he plays as the King of Sorrows as he describes and the validation he needs from it.

"Gotta give what they want / peel your skin / never undersell," he sings, peeling back the curtain.

"I found it cathartic, personally," he admits. "At the end of the day, I yearn for validation just like everybody else in their lives, and it's a crutch for me. [That song] is like me examining myself and my psyche. It was really strange writing that one, but it felt cathartic."

Writing 'Sorrow Machine', while cathartic and self-exploratory, was essential for making 'with you in spirit'. Jon describes it as "tapping into what I've got to do and the parts of myself that I have to dig into to make a decent record."

From there, he and Balance and Composure have created an album that doesn't just act as a marker of their return, but an album in which they leap forward.

"It's kind of a surrender album to the universe or life in general; realising you don't have control," Jon says of the album. He adds that it's about "not feeling present when I need to be because I have all these things on my mind," too.

It's multi-faceted, but thanks to the time taken to really, truly craft this album, each facet is explored and fleshed out to its fullest. They sound incredible, thanks in no small part to Will Yip. They're textural, layered with atmosphere and dank, moody energy. Jon Simmons is razor-sharp in his songwriting, too. They've made an album that is guaranteed to adopt a gargantuan personality when played live.

'with you in spirit' is an evolution of Balance and Composure that is sure to be embraced by longtime fans who will see the course that's been travelled from 'Separation' to here. It will also bring them a fresh wave of fans that walk the same course in reverse and find all the same highlights.

Balance and Composure's story is one of rebirth and resilience. They formed from the break-up of two bands, then split themselves in 2019, and now, in their triumphant return, they've shown once again that great things can come from endings.