As Everything Unfolds

Depth. An infinity loop of layers that unravel over time, reserved for the most observant of eyes - for those who long to dig beneath the surface. In the case of Charlie Rolfe, the importance of depth has come to define both the art that she creates - as frontwoman and lead vocalist of As Everything Unfolds - and recontextualise the art she holds dearest."As I've got older, I've appreciated the depth of anything in my life," she explains. "I can never accept something for how it is on the surface, I have to understand it." Whether it's the allegories and social commentary in Blade Runner, the secrets of the vaults in the Fallout video games or My Chemical Romance's seminal album 'The Black Parade' - which she will see performed live in its entirety on her 30th birthday - that desire for artistic depth flows through Charlie."I love absorbing information," she adds. "I think that information is one of the most powerful tools in the world, and it's undervalued by a lot of people. The more you know, the more you can potentially set yourself free." Which brings us to just one thread of the concept behind 'DID YOU ASK TO BE SET FREE?', the first album from the Buckinghamshire quartet since signing to Century Media Records (Electric Callboy, Heriot).Set free from who? What? Where? The rigour of that question is what characterises the fluidity of As Everything Unfolds' third full-length, which grapples with the tightrope between a dream state and reality. Should you walk the tightrope and risk leaving your safe haven of fantasy, or do you continue to live vicariously through other characters and worlds? Do you want to? Are you able to? Whatever the choice - conscious or otherwise - will you find 'freedom' at the end of the road? That never-ending labyrinth of questions, not answers, is what shapes the crux of the record. Having supported new labelmates Electric Callboy and genre-bending experts Enter Shikari around the release of 2023's 'Ultraviolet', tragedy hit camp As Everything Unfolds in August 2024 when drummer Jamie Gowers, who was also Charlie's boyfriend, passed away. Midway through writing this album, with a dream support tour with Bury Tomorrow on the horizon, the quartet - completed by Adam Kerr (guitar), George Hunt (bass) and Jon Cassidy (keys) - banded together to re-ignite the flames of As Everything Unfolds."It's going to be shit and it's going to be horrible, but running away from it felt like the wrong thing to do." recalls Charlie. "This is the hardest record we will ever have to do - how can we flip it into something we're proud of, and give it the longevity and legacy it deserves?" Taking two years to give writing and pre-production the TLC it deserved, the album was recorded between London and Hawley across three weeks in February 2025.Despite initially feeling - understandably - like a record of two halves, Charlie was never going to settle for anything other than a unified concept. While reconnected with old comforts like Thirty Seconds To Mars' 'A Beautiful Lie', Donnie Darko and The Shining, it was when an old university mate recommended a book called 'The Creative Act' by super-producer Rick Rubin that inspired the eureka moment for this record."I really took the idea of subconscious, secondary-action writing," she explains. "The stuff that comes out is tapping into a completely different part of your brain." Leaning into her natural disposition as a multi-tasker, Charlie allowed the ideas to flow into her daily life rather than carving out time to force them out. 'EDGE OF FOREVER' was written on a 30-minute drive to Jon's studio. 'GASOLINE' - arguably their best chorus since breakout hit 'On The Inside' - came while she was making a cheese toastie. Sonically, 'DID YOU ASK TO BE SET FREE?' propels As Everything Unfolds out of the metalcore box into a band who have found their own sound at the crossroads of genres. "I've definitely steered away from metalcore, and I think we all have," says Charlie. While the four members respectively obsessed over Bryan Adams, death metal, EDM and Depeche Mode, the fusion point with the DNA of the band is what makes the record so thrilling. You needn't look further than the '80s groove of 'REVERIE' or the DnB that spearheads 'SET IN FLOW'.Bury Tomorrow's Dani Winter-Bates lends his rage to 'WHAT YOU WANTED', making for a glorious knee-jerk duality alongside Charlie's angelic highs. 'IDOLS' is a roaring takedown of the folks who undeservedly sit on pedestals, augmented by the 'Bean Soup Theory' or 'What About Me-ism' where people demand and think anything in the world that isn't catered to them is wrong, sometimes framing it as a personal attack. Given how self-centred and egotistical society has become - with selflessness giving way to main character syndrome - these musings led Charlie to think about the world's obsession with other people's lives, and those who idolise other people in the first instance. "I don't want people to idolise me, put me on a pedestal and think that I am this person that just does no wrong - because that's literally impossible as a human being."Ultimately, 'DID YOU ASK TO BE SET FREE?' is an alternate lens through which Charlie examines reality, and the never-ending dichotomy between hiding and confronting it. As someone who experienced a lot of maladaptive daydreaming during the early days of her trauma - "I would sit [for hours] and think about hypothetical situations" - the tool and throughline was there for Charlie to tell her story, creating her own character for people to latch onto in the spirit of the albums, movies and videogames that she loves and often escapes to. In a landscape that feels increasingly surface-level, As Everything Unfolds have pivoted in the other direction. "Rather than being just angry at the world, I just want people to see it in a different way and tell a story through it," she elaborates. After a turbulent few years and a whole decade of honing their craft, there is a creative depth to 'DID YOU ASK TO BE SET FREE?' that ensures it's their strongest album to date."It's told its story, and I don't feel like I need to take it any further," she boldly declares. "It's a capsule of that moment, of the things that happened to me, and I'm now in a new part of my life. We were together the other night and we all went, 'This is the first time we all feel in quite a good place for a long time.' That's why drawing the line under it is important."