There are a handful of bands whose emotional songs feel even more intense in this respect due to their untimely demises. It’s a weird experience listening to an album, realizing the group was really onto something, and then finding out that they never got the breakthrough they seemed to be heading toward – and, in many cases, never released any other music under those names. Here are a few highlights:

Gracer – The Fires We Set

Gracer only ever put out one album and I was certainly a few years late to discover them. And while there were some pre-Gracer projects with similar influences, these releases certainly are not any less lost to the tide of time. Gracer’s unique combination of post-rock and commercial elements, all rounded off with the abrasive edges of punk and post-hardcore, situates this as an album that is as strong as it is unique. “The Fires We Set” shows the full dynamic of the band’s range and gives us a look into their melancholic and nighttime flavors which haunt the whole record.

Kiven – Canyon Bridge

Here’s yet another band who only put out one full-length. It’s quite possibly the album I’ve listened to the most despite its 2014 release, and much of this is due to a good number of months where this CD did not leave my car. The whole album itself isn’t particularly moody, but there are parts like “A Winding Tightrope” and the album’s closer, “Canyon Bridge,” that take me back to a particular time and place. “Canyon Bridge” has infamously become the song my friends and I can’t seem to agree on as far as what key it’s in, but beyond my own personal lore, it’s a song that sits in stark contrast with the rest of the album. A couple vocal lines are repeated, drenched in some kind of processing, and the track enters in gently. But by the end, there’s the emotional fanfare of trumpet to close things out. I didn’t grow up around canyons, so I can’t help associate my sole road trip out west with some of the vibes of this track. While some of the members of Kiven have gone on to form the more commercially successful hard rock group New Language, it’s this buried release that will always stay with me.

The Willis – They Have a Theory

Admittedly, I only know of The Willis because their primary members are still active musicians. But the lore of this band who almost played on the Jimmy Fallon Show is fascinating. And like many of their compatriots, the internet wasn’t the same place for music when this album first dropped. This version of the album, unabashedly unmastered, resurfaced posthumously, and its sobriety is mostly tied to the fact that most of the members are still connected and live near each other but that The Willis just couldn’t catch that break that seemed to be right there all along. “They Have a Theory” sees Stephen McCabe wield the sort of lyrical poetry that could only come from a university English instructor over what one might describe as emo-pop. Other songs on the album go bigger and harder, but there’s a softness on this track, coupled with McCabe’s tired delivery, that gives this particular track its gravity. Members of The Willis currently are involved in Redshift Headlights, Spy vs. Spy, and probably a few other things I’m not aware of.

Moving Mountains – Eastern Leaves

Let’s address the elephant in the room: yes, Moving Mountains was a signed band with multiple mid-level label albums. This certainly puts them ahead of their compatriots on this list. This group that formed in high school who originally independently released their first album went on to get signed. That sounds like a success story. But the lyrics of “Apsides,” the closing track off the band’s final album, tell a painful story.

I once wrote a song
The meaning was lost
When my words came out wrong
But you all held it down
You all held it to me to sing it out loud
Just understand
That I don’t want to do this again
We grew apart
And I can feel for once
That I belong somewhere else

Will it sell?
And will the kids define it
As something that breaks the ground
And all the things that don’t amount
To anything at all?

The song is tinged with regret and introspection, and it’s only cemented by the fact it was the band’s last full release. While Moving Mountains did resurface for a split EP a few years after, it seems that no new projects have surfaced and it’s uncertain if there will be any kind of reunion show. At least in this case it seems the band chose to end things on their own terms.

K Sera – The Economist

Some people have such a signature hold on particular styles that you can feels their fingerprints. If you’d think K Sera sounds a bit like The Dear Hunter, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn of Casey Crescenzo’s involvement. I’ve jokingly described this theatrical brand of progressive rock as “post-musical,” but I feel like it does sum up the the band’s showy antics and rock chops well. While I don’t necessarily have the same emotional connection to this group as some of those above, this was a band that seemed to just disappear into thin air, leaving behind a single album (again!) and a few standout EPs.

The Rise of Science – Shortcomings Can Be Incomplete

This is perhaps the most tragic and confusing band on this list. TROS released one album in 2008 called Casey which tied together dynamic and layered songs with phone calls between two friends helping to serve in providing the full context of the story. The band vanished for several years, resurfaced on Facebook announcing new music and how some members of the bands had become born-again Christians, and drop off yet again. Facebook comments piled on the posts as the years went on with nothing as much as a hint of what was going on. Then, everything came to a head when lead vocalist Catlin Boswell attacked his family, killing his father in the process. We can safely assume TROS isn’t coming back, and this is easily the most distressing entry on this list.

The Elijah – I Destroyed

I don’t know what was going on in the UK during the early 2010s, but The Elijah’s brand of orchestral post-hardcore was most uniquely a British phenomenon. Other members of the movement included Rinoa, Devil Sold His Soul, and Echoes. And while some of these bands have carried on, it truly feels like this phenomenon was short-lived. Here, the band’s success was largely limited by cross-continental exposure and the remnants of their career are now over a decade old.

What about you? Are there are songs/artists you felt met an untimely end? Do you recognize any of these artists? We’d love to have you weigh in.