5 Years Later and Turnstile still continues to GLOW ON

By Kayla Harper

The Baltimore hardcore punk band, Turnstile, has recently blown up in the music scene after the release of their fourth album, NEVER ENOUGH, in 2025 – going on to win their first Grammy’s at the 2026 award ceremony for Best Rock Album (NEVER ENOUGH) and Best Metal performance for “BIRDS” (NEVER ENOUGH).

However, Turnstile has been releasing incredible albums, defining their own style and growing their dedicated fanbase with each release, for many years. 2021’s GLOW ON acted as a shifting point in their sonic landscape and truly set the stage for NEVER ENOUGH and the success that would follow. The two albums are even aesthetically similar, titles stylized in all caps with pastel clouds painting the covers.  The records themselves are packaged and formatted the same, with GLOW ON taking on pink as it’s main colour and NEVER ENOUGH blue.

If you’ve joined the Turnstile bandwagon with the release of NEVER ENOUGH, GLOW ON is an absolute must with it’s sonic and aesthetic similarities you’re guaranteed to love it just as much, maybe even more.

Opening with sparkly synthesizers before the bright-toned, but fast paced guitar kicks in, “MYSTERY” opens GLOW ON in a place that lyrically feels at standstills, almost like the narrator is searching for some sort of purpose while battling with their own mortality, “There’s a clock in my head / Is it wrong, is it right? / I know you’re scared of running out of time.”  

The sparkly synths return to carry listeners into the next track, “BLACKOUT”.  Something that remains constant across Turnstile’s discography, but especially on GLOW ON and NEVER ENOUGH, is that their albums are crafted to be incredibly cohesive, to the point you can’t quite place when one song changes to the next. As a result, listening to the record front-to-back feels like entering a fever dream, when it’s over you feel emotionally changed.

As a whole, GLOW ON, seems to focus on themes of love, light and mortality. Songs like “UNDERWATER BOI” , featuring vocals from Boygenius’ Julien Baker, slows down the heavy guitars for something more melodic as it explores finding purpose and ambition at a young age and not giving into death early on, “Boy has got a long way to go /Swimming through the seasons of cold / Living with a pain he don’t know.” 

One of GLOW ON’s biggest hits and strongest moments, “HOLIDAY”,  contains all the best components of Turnstile, the way they effortlessly blend shoegaze into something dreamy and atmospheric, completely letting it fall apart and come back together even heavier in the end. “HOLIDAY” feels like leaning into the joy and happy moments in life no matter how big or small, even if it doesn’t have an apparent purpose, “too bright to live, too bright to die, I wanna celebrate…so I can never feel the cold…and I can sail with no direction.”

Alongside the themes previously discussed are moments of perseverance to push through when it gets hard, “Following a feeling in my heart / Even if it all just falls apart / When I hit a wall I gotta / Break in” (“ENDLESS”).  This very angst and ambition can be felt in every part of the song, the vocals, guitars, synths, drums, etc. across the album.

As it slows down on “ALIEN LOVE CALL” we reach what truly feels like the thesis of the record as Brendon Yates sings, “All my glow is on / Can the will be strong? / Can’t be the only one”. The ideas of love and glowing being linked together ties into previous ideas of staying true to these parts of yourself while navigating the darker and happier parts of life, “Running like we got somewhere to go / Every high is followed with a low, low, low, low”  (“WILD WRLD”).

While NEVER ENOUGH (2025) is their most commercially successful record yet, NEVER ENOUGH would not be as popular as it is without GLOW ON which acted as the blueprint for the atmospheric dreamy shoegaze melodies that effortlessly blend with Turnstile’s hardcore punk style. GLOW ON is an exploration of the purest forms of life; embracing love and happiness; perseverance to push through dark times; and of course, continue to “glow on” (“LONELY DEZIRES”).