84 Tigers

This is 84 Tigers at their most unflinching and alive. On their sophomore album Nothing Ends, the Michigan trio wrestles with loss, resilience, and the fragile beauty of time, crafting a sound that’s as colossal as it is deeply human.

Formed by brothers Mike Reed and Ben Reed (Small Brown Bike) and longtime friend Jono Diener (The Swellers), 84 Tigers emerged in 2022 with Time in the Lighthouse, an electrifying debut that fused soaring melody with punishing heaviness. But life after that record was anything but linear. As writing began for album two, the sudden loss of lifelong friend and former bandmate Travis Dopp sent shockwaves through the band’s world. “I questioned if losing a creative partner took the energy out of my process,” Mike recalls. “Songs started and stopped. I struggled. Then one day it broke, this mantra popped into my head: Tears in your eyes. Fist in the air. That became a path forward.”

The result is Nothing Ends, a record that refuses to flinch in the face of grief. From the cathartic roar of “The Crush of It All” to the aching tribute of “Two Rivers” (featuring Rocky Votolato) and the hopeful refrains of “Only Light,” it’s a collection of songs that live in the tension between sorrow and renewal. There’s a melodic enormity at play here, a push-and-pull between discordant riffs and transcendent hooks that echoes 90s titans like Quicksand and Seaweed (with the latter’s Aaron Stauffer lending his voice to “Regeneration Days”). But at its core, this is a deeply personal document. “We wanted the songs to feel big and epic, but also human,” Mike explains.

Recorded once again with producer Marc Jacob Hudson, the band embraced restraint and rawness, staying true to their three-piece dynamic. “We kept it a one-guitar record,” says Mike. “We wanted it to sound like us, live in a room, feeling every hit and melody.”

In the wake of loss, Nothing Ends became a reminder that nothing truly does. “Everything you love will hurt you someday,” Mike sings on the album’s closing track, a lyric both devastating and oddly comforting. It’s an album born of grief but lit by the faint glow of hope, of connection, of moving forward.

As the band prepares for their next chapter, touring, running marathons in honor of lost friends, and continuing to build on their creative bond, Nothing Ends stands as both elegy and rallying cry.