There is a point where listing a band’s influences stops being useful. Idolvein reach it pretty quickly.
Yes, you can hear why names such as Bring Me The Horizon, Loathe and Spiritbox sit around the Nottingham band’s world. But then Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, The 1975, Periphery and even composers Steve Reich and Nils Frahm enter the picture, and suddenly the more interesting question is what Idolvein do with all of it.
On 9 October we get a better answer when they release their second EP, This Place I Leave Behind.
Heavy music without staying in one lane
Idolvein are Caelan Rivers on vocals and guitar, Jack Thorp on lead guitar, Oli Brown on bass and Ryan Shores on drums. Their music is rooted in alternative metal, but the appeal is the friction between weight and atmosphere: riffs that can hit hard without every song becoming a blunt instrument, and melodies that give the heavier sections somewhere to go.
The band describe themselves in terms of progressive ideas, experimentation and vivid soundscapes. Normally that kind of language can disappear into a press biography. Here, the range of reference points makes sense. This is a band interested in texture as much as impact.
This Place I Leave Behind
The six-track EP follows debut Where We Became Spirits and collects four singles released across 2026 alongside two new tracks.
The tracklist runs Today’s the Day I Die, My Last War, The Ways We Remain, Enrapture Me, In the Hands of Thieves and What Might’ve Been.
In the Hands of Thieves is a particularly useful entry point. It shows a band comfortable putting melody and atmosphere alongside the heavier machinery rather than treating softness as merely the quiet bit before another breakdown.
Why we’re paying attention now
There is already some momentum around them. BBC Radio presenters Alyx Holcombe and Dean Jackson have supported the band, while Idolvein have spent 2026 releasing music and getting in front of new audiences after co-headline runs with HollowKin and ENDSCAPE.
But this is precisely the stage where Imminent Infinity’s Grassroots coverage should be interested. Not when the story has already been decided. Not when a band is halfway up a festival poster and everybody suddenly claims they were there first.
Idolvein have enough behind them to suggest something is happening, while still being early enough that This Place I Leave Behind can genuinely move the story forward.
We’ll be listening to the EP when it arrives on Friday. For now, if your heavier listening sits somewhere between alternative metal, progressive textures and songs that still care about melody, Idolvein are worth getting acquainted with. They also sit naturally alongside the heavier end of the new British guitar music we’ve been following, including the next generation being discussed around Ozzfest’s return.
This Place I Leave Behind tracklist
1. Today’s the Day I Die
2. My Last War
3. The Ways We Remain
4. Enrapture Me
5. In the Hands of Thieves
6. What Might’ve Been
