Header image credit: @spicehouserecordings
Based in Charlotte, blankstate. is comprised of Jacob (he/him; vocals/guitar), Faye (she/her; bass/scream vocals), and Seth (he/him; drums). In 2024, the band released LOTUS, an EP they made mostly because it was fun to play. It turned out to resonate with more people than they expected, which left them facing a challenge familiar to any band with a beloved record: how to follow it up.
RITUAL, released to all platforms on August 14, 2026, is their answer. Recorded again at SpiceHouse in Sanford, NC, the five-song EP shares LOTUS‘s fascination with cycles and repetition, this time turned toward habit, compulsion, and loss. The two records are so closely tied that blankstate. pressed them onto opposite sides of the same vinyl. Even the cover art responds directly to its predecessor, trading a dark parking garage for a deer photographed in a Savannah forest.
Jacob and Seth talk through the fear that shaped the record, the songwriting habit behind RITUAL’s most personal track, and the challenge of building a live set around two EPs that sound different from each other.
This is your second project with SpiceHouse, after LOTUS. What was the recording process and the production experience returning there?
Jacob: SpiceHouse is run by two of our really good friends: Jose from Weymouth and Anunt from Condado. We met them by playing music with their bandsand getting connected through that. But working through our music with them has been really helpful. I feel as though they understand what we’re going for pretty much at all times.
I can always reliably count on them to know when we need input, when we don’t, and what we need when we do. They’ve always done a good job of kind of understanding what our vision is and knowing what needs to be done to get us there. Seth and I have been at SpiceHouse for a lot of different projects. I think Seth has recorded probably more projects at Spice than any single person.
Seth: It’s so fun.
What other types of projects have you [Seth] done at SpiceHouse? Either with other bands or like solo drumming, anything like that?
Seth: Yeah, so we did the last two blankstate. records there. The second band that I was in, Moving Boxes, we just recorded our last album [Nothing So Certain] there. Jacob and I were both there recording the Between Two Trees album [softlock picking] last year. Jacob and I are in a new band called Nevermore Sincere that just recorded a couple of songs at SpiceHouse. And then Jacob and I also used to be in a band called Nervous Surface that did a live recording session there.
That’s really cool! It’s like a go-to spot for you guys and other bands.
Seth: Oh yeah, it’s great. It’s the best recording quality I’ve consistently seen out of a studio. Not just like a local studio, but in general. They’re really, really good at what they do.
How do you feel like with the recording production, how this album RITUAL was different to LOTUS?
Jacob: I feel like this time around, having done LOTUS and a couple other things there, our workflow was quite a bit better. We went in with a more structured plan of how it was gonna work. Going into the very beginning of recording RITUAL, we set a bit of a deadline for ourselves, just to make sure we were done writing, so we wouldn’t be messing around [in the studio] longer than we needed to.
When we booked and paid for our recording time before, it was very early on in the writing process. We were like, “All right, we have until this time to finish it.” Which I think pushed us in a way that definitely needed to happen. And having a clear visual of everything going into RITUAL helped us structure our recording plan better.
How would you describe the creative process and how you’ve evolved creatively in structure or musically?
Jacob: I feel like our writing process was really similar. It was still like the same way we wrote LOTUS. We kind of got together in the practice space and then would just jam around and try to figure out what we found was fun to play. Starting from “What are we enjoying, what are we having fun doing?” And then finding those [musical] shapes and making them into actual songs. Then I would take lyrics and start pairing the two.
It was the same process for RITUAL. We were at least a bit more comfortable in that space. I feel like we could take some bigger swings in terms of different stylistic things, a different range of emotions. We cover a broader spectrum this time around.
Image credit: eva.hargis.photography
How would you describe the overall theme of RITUAL for your audience or for yourselves?
Jacob: I think thematically RITUAL is about habits. In a lot of ways, I’m a creature of habit. Obviously a decent amount of the record is about habits as they relate to loss. Rituals, tendencies, compulsions, that type of thing. Very cyclical behaviors.
Seth: Yeah, obviously Jacob is way more qualified to answer that because he writes all the lyrics and is very good at it. But, I don’t know if people pick up on just how tied LOTUS and RITUAL are in themes. Just in the way that Jacob was talking about cyclical things and habits and everything. If you look at LOTUS, the vibe is also cycles and patterns. The imagery that we used for LOTUS is very similar. So that’s why we’re selling a vinyl that has LOTUS on one side and RITUAL on the other side at our shows right now. We see them as companion EPs to each other.
Jacob: Yeah, I think I said it at some point, somewhere, that RITUAL is kind of like LOTUS’ sister.
With the whole album being out, what do you think you want your audience to really take away from the listening experience?
Jacob: Whenever we make anything, my goal is not specifically to think too hard about what people will take away from it. Obviously, I want people to like it. But I think that, especially in our earlier writing, I was very focused on people’s perception. Like, “How can I make it exactly clear every time what I’m talking about? What does this mean? What is this trying to convey?”
But as I have grown more in my lyric writing, as we’ve grown more musically, I think that my viewpoint on it is very much like, “It’s gonna come out a lot better if all of us are doing the thing that we enjoy the most, right?” Especially on the lyric front, like “What makes sense to me?” How things kind of filter through my brain, I find that if people get some connection to that whether it’s what I intended or it’s whatever they found within it, it’s gonna be a lot stronger.
Seth: Yeah, I think people should just make whatever kind of music they want. There’s way more of an emphasis on making the music we want to make than making some really consistent sound. And I think people should do that too. Just make whatever you want to make. And I think it comes across in the music if you’re enjoying what you’re playing.
On RITUAL, what sticks out to you? Either a song, a lyric, or any type of specific line or fill that really speaks to you through this whole project?
Seth: I think it’s cool because I don’t write the lyrics that when Jacob comes at us with all the lyrics, I get to experience it like everybody else for the first time. I think “vulpix” as a whole is my favorite song on the EP. But I think that, musically, it was the first song that we wrote for the EP a really long time ago, right after LOTUS. All of us shine really well on that song because Jacob’s lyrics are so good, and then there’s the ending part that’s heavy on Faye’s screams, and I really like my drum parts in it. Both lyrically and instrumentally, that song is kind of just all of us being comfortable doing what we’re doing.
Jacob: I would say the thing that stands out to me the most is the first song on RITUAL. It’s called “took ya long enough”. Whenever you are making music in any regard, there’s always the dissonance between what you kind of picture in your head and then what you can make into an actual product, right? There are just ways in which that can’t translate. But the ones that always stand out to me are the ones where I can see it really clearly. Like, “This is how this was in my head, and that’s pretty one-to-one for how it exists in actuality.” And “took ya long enough” is pretty directly what I heard in my head.
I have a habit of writing where I jump perspectives between speaker A, speaker B, right? I’m switching between the two. And in “took ya long enough”, each perspective change is accompanied directly with the tempo changes. And so I think it works really well as a whole piece. It’s really effective.
Do you think “took ya long enough” is a good example of your voice as a writer then?
Jacob: Yeah, I would say so.
For this project, what have you found that has either challenged you or changed you as an artist?
Seth: I would say we were just scared after we put out LOTUS. LOTUS was our first time putting out something a bit more on the emo side. A little bit heavier and louder. And we kind of just did it because we wanted to, and we thought it would be fun. We didn’t know that it was going to be received as well as it was. People really connected with that, and we were like, “Now we have to make something that we hope people resonate with just as much.” I think we resonated with LOTUS more than we expected when we started it also. And so we were just like, “How do we do that again?”
Jacob: I think it was just hard to feel like we were having to make a follow-up to something that resonated with a lot of people. Having the weight of that. Since the songs have been out and playing them live, they’re just really different from LOTUS. Like in how they’re played, at least guitar-wise, are all really different. So it’s kind of a weird shift in my brain to play LOTUS stuff and this new stuff together.
So when making set lists, how are you trying to combine those projects together?
Seth: No, dude, it’s so hard. We just sit there like, “Oh man, what do we play?” And then we put songs on a list, and then sometimes we play them. There are things to think about, like some of the songs are in different tunings, so it makes sense to keep certain songs together.
But it’s kind of us just all talking about what songs we want to play and then being like, “I guess we’ll play this this time.” And it changes. But it’s fun now that we have enough songs that we think are really solid to play live, so we can vary the setlist. That’s a good amount of freedom to have or to play a longer set if we need.
Image credit: djgamecx_photography
I wanted to ask about you releasing both of your singles: “it was a misinput!!!” and “bridge to terebithia”. I was wondering what made you pick those songs to release first, and what people’s first impressions to the new music were?
Jacob: Well, at least with “it was a misinput!!!”, it was definitely a closer sound to LOTUS. It’s got the catchy chorus, the flashy verse. It seemed like a good first introduction from LOTUS towards RITUAL. “bridge to terabithia”, there was a really weird process of landing on that one that I don’t really remember. Seth, what did we do?
Seth: I don’t really remember. There’s like a bunch of stuff to think of. “it was a misinput!!!” was a really good first one because it’s short, it’s catchy, it’s flashy, and it’s good to catch people’s attention.
You obviously don’t want to put out a song like “retriever” as a single because it starts really slow. You’re just trying to keep their attention when you put out a single. That’s what’s getting pushed out in a lot of Spotify playlists to people who don’t know you. We didn’t want to put out the first song as a single.
I honestly think that “bridge” kind of got “process of elimination” into being the second single. But I really like it as a single. It’s an interesting song instrumentally.
I really love the EP cover picture. And I was just wondering who took the photo?
Jacob: [Raises his hand]
What artistically made you take that photo and think about it in relation to your music?
Jacob: There’s a couple thoughts going in my head. One, I knew pretty early on that I wanted something that was going to be like a contrast to how dark the LOTUS cover was. I wanted something that was very bright to be kind of the opposite end of that, right? RITUAL definitely has notes of that folky type sound. There is some writing that is very grounded in a natural theme. And so it felt very much like a contrast to that cover of LOTUS, which is dark, it’s a parking garage.
For RITUAL, something a lot more living and breathing made sense to me. And then that picture, I took fully without the intent of it being the cover. I took it like a day or two before my birthday in Savannah, Georgia, which is like my favorite city. I was there on my birthday, and I took that picture. It all felt connected.
Is there anything that you would like to talk about or anything else that you can think of that you would want to share?
Seth: Specifically, I would say I’m glad that the project is out. I’m glad that people seem to be enjoying it, and I’m hopeful that everyone who does listen to it and likes it will come hear us play it live because I think that they’ll probably like it even more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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