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I Promised The World are a band born out of the desire to thrive in the face of tragedy. The Texas-based five-piece started life after the father of vocalist/guitarist Caleb Molina lost his in 2020 due to COVID. Though the band—completed by vocalist Hunter Wilson, drummer Mason Zschau, guitarist Mason Nowlin and bassist Rivers Shutt—didn’t actually form until a few years later in 2023, their existence is intrinsically linked to his death. It goes without saying that I Promised The World has always been both an extension and expression of Molina’s grief. But, as the band’s new self-titled EP demonstrates, it now also exists in defiance of it, as a celebration of Molina’s dad’s life.
“My dad was a musician who played every instrument,” says Molina. “He was the worship leader at church, so I'd go with him, be the first one there and help him set up. He was always up late making music, and that really inspired me. I wrote my first song probably three weeks after he passed, and I just feel like it's something that he's carried in. He's my biggest inspiration and motivation for making music—and I think he wouldn't believe it if he saw what we were doing right now.”
He's right. In a couple of short years, I Promised The World—whose oldest member is just 21—have done and experienced an awful lot. Initially called Sinema, the band released a debut EP, After The Flatline, and album, Fear Of The Fall, in late 2023 and 2024 respectively. Their blend of screamo, Midwest emo and post-hardcore is an emotionally volatile tour de force—certainly not something you’d ever hear in a church—that takes inspiration both from the late ’90s/early 2000s but through a post-internet lens. It means that I Promised The World are able to authentically channel and pay tribute to disparate influences such as, say, Glassjaw and Mineral, even though its members were barely alive, if at all, when those bands first broke up. At the same time, it’s not just a carbon-copy tribute to that era—these songs are injected with I Promised The World’s unique attitude and sense of purpose.
