Freeze The Fall

Growing up in BC's Okanagan Valley, the members of melodic metal trio Freeze the Fall have had a front-row seat to how radically the world can change under you. Their hometown of Kelowna, where they used to play in the postcard-perfect forests, is now the site of apocalyptic summers, of wildfires and droughts and skies the shade of a bruise. Here, climate anxiety is not abstract — it's very real. Lead vocalist/guitarist Quinn Mitzel recalls she used to flood a rink in her backyard every winter; these days it barely freezes. "It's kind of hard to ignore," she says. So they don't.

Freeze the Fall's full-length debut Crescents and the Torch, is a concept album about our interactions with the environment — urgent climate commentary, yes, but also as a metaphor for the struggles we face on our journey through life. It's a love letter to the band's home province, but the hauntingly heavy music and message will enrapture listeners from anywhere.

The band's own origin story begins in 2022 in middle school, when Quinn (age 19) first met bassist/vocalist Aria Becker (17) in the hallway, the two recognizing kindred spirits by the band shirts they wore. "We literally started crying because we could not believe we had found each other," Quinn says. After connecting with drummer Jonah Goncalves (18), the trio wrote their first original song within six weeks. The band's self-released Eps Thrones (2024) and The Red Garden (2025), were distributed by 604 Records, and their evocative, cinematic music videos established the group as an art project ready to take on much bigger things.

Crescents and the Torch moves through five realms — the Forest, the Ocean, the Cemetery, the Winter Forest, and the unwritten dark of Torchland — each mapped to a stage of life. Songs such as "Roots" (about the cultural ties that may bind a little too tightly), "Valley of Ashes" (their meditation on the BC wildfires equally inspired by The Great Gatsby), and "Siren Song" (reframing the Greek myth as a story about being young and misread in a male-dominated scene) offer a mirror between reality and fantasy.

Whimsical language and ethereal melodies, combined with heavy riffs and rhythm, are crafted to carry the emotional weight of the anxious times we're all in, especially the generation that has grown up with unlimited access to information. "Social media can create this anxiety of 'the world is ending,' and sometimes it feels that way," says Quinn, "but there's more nuance to it than that." All three speak openly about mental health struggles and the importance of building community where music is a way through. For Jonah, playing itself became the release valve. "When I get to sit down and just go crazy, I really feel like I can relieve my emotions onto the kit."

The album is also an invitation to play. Not with rules or playing pieces, but a place for imagination to run wild. "I was inspired by this childhood game, Foxes and the Hound," explains Aria. "You don't need anything, you and your friends go out and you play this paranormal game in the forest. We were already writing about the forests then realized that's what the album was really about — a game representing life."

Freeze the Fall remain grateful that their childhoods were spent in the mountains and the forests and the lakes of BC. They know that growing up costs some of that magic, but not all of it. In their music and in their hearts, magical things still exist.