Senses Fail’s Let It Enfold You was released ten years ago next week, and PropertyOfZack is launching our next Decade feature in honor of the album today! We have commentary on the album from Senses Fail’s frontman Buddy Nielsen, as well as POZ team members Becky Kovach, Ashley Aron, Zack Zarrillo and Jason Stives, so enjoy and reblog to let us know your thoughts on Let It Enfold You ten years later!

Related Stories:

Senses Fail Announce ‘Let It Enfold You’ Ten Year Tour

How Let It Enfold You holds up in 2014

New Jersey tends to get shit on a lot. Why? I’m not really sure. I love my state, and will proudly consider myself as a representative of it until the day I die. It was with great enthusiasm, then, that I dove back into the debut album of a band who, for me at least, has always embodied the best of the New Jersey scene. That band is Senses Fail and the album, of course, Let It Enfold You.

Ten years later, Let It Enfold You still lives up to everything my memories have built it up to be – a brash and passionate album with choruses that sink in like poison and a well-kept balance of clean, melodic vocals and raw, primal screams. Let It Enfold You spawned numerous hits, including “You’re Cute When You Scream,” “Buried a Lie,” and “Rum Is For Drinking, Not For Burning,” all of which are still among my favorites to hear live.



It’s hard to replicate what Senses Fail did with Let It Enfold You, because they did it so well that nothing else even comes close. This is one of the few ten-year tours that I haven’t rolled my eyes at or brushed off immediately, which in itself is a testimony of the merit of this album. – Becky Kovach

How does Let It Enfold You fit into the band’s catalog today?

The record still makes up most of our live show. Out of all the records, we probably play LIEFY songs more than any other record. I still think it holds up well. My voice has completely changed, and when we recorded this I was newly 19, still a teenager. Lyrically some of it still resonates with me, but a lot of it I can’t really say I relate to anymore, which is a good thing. People love the record and it really put us on the map. – Buddy Nielsen

Most important song on Let It Enfold You

The tracks on Let It Enfold You range from edgy to angsty to emotional, yet Senses Fail does a phenomenal job of arranging them in such a way that the emo and punk influences meld flawlessly. To pick a standout track on this album is hard, as all the singles were unbelievable, but my inner scene kid is telling me to go with “Bite To Break Skin.” The sweeping intro brings back memories of the random MySpace profile where I first heard the track, probably somewhere in 2005-2006, and became drawn in to the poppy-screamo vibe.

Was this a groundbreaking niche in the mid-00s? Were the lyrics (“My swan song will be like a bullet laced in anger as the razor cuts the soft spot on your heel”) unlike any I had ever heard before? Definitely not. But I think the best way to measure a band’s success is the test of time, and this song has certainly passed that test.

When I last saw Senses Fail in May 2013, their set included all their big singles: “Rum Is For Drinking, Not For Burning,” “Buried A Lie,” “Calling All Cars,” plus “Canine” and “The Path” off then-newly released Renacer. However, “Bite To Break Skin” was the song of choice when the band was chanted back onstage for an encore. The balance of clean vocals and hard-hitting, almost brutal (but not quite “br00t4l”) screams give the song an edge, while the melodic guitars paired with a bouncy beat will push you from standing in the back of the room with your arms crossed to jumping up and down while violently finger pointing. Senses Fail capture the catchiness of pop but make it gritty and aggressive, and “Bite To Break Skin” is the perfect embodiment of that.

Perhaps I am biased; maybe the random Myspace profile that brought me into Senses Fail contained enough brass knuckles and Bleeding Cowboy font to make me think that “Bite To Break Skin” was profile song-worthy and therefore the only one worth checking out. But, after nearly a decade of putting Let It Enfold You on heavy rotation, it’s still the standout track by far. – Ashley Aron

What was the most difficult challenge you or the band overcame in making the record?

This record was really, really crazy. We got upstreamed from Drive Thru to Geffen records and then ended up releasing it on Vagrant. We recorded this record in about six different studios over the course of a year. It wasn’t the most difficult record to make in terms of writing, but in terms of headache and time between recording and release, it was very hard. – Buddy Nielsen

Was Senses Fail successful in following it up?

It would be hard to say “no." Still Searching sold 200,000 copies in its first month on sale and charted at #15 on Billboard. The album was a hit, and is still a hit. “Can’t Be Saved” is likely the most recognizable Senses Fail song, and for good reason. Buddy Nielsen hit his stride on that song between catchy choruses and aggressive soul.

As a fan, Let It Enfold You is the preferred album, but Senses Fail had their greatest success off of this release as it built off something strong and pushed it even farther. – Zack Zarrillo

What changed for the band after the record was released?

I think after the record, we really took off. We had been doing some amazing touring, and with help from the Drive Thru buzz and the new move to Vagrant, we were really in a position to catch peoples’ attention. We were just at the right place at the right time with the right record. A lot of the music business is timing, and you can’t plan that, you just get lucky. We got very, very lucky. – Buddy Nielsen

Legacy of Let It Enfold You

For many pop punk and emo bands of the last decade, you can determine which aspects of their discography matter the most simply by touring. Numerous bands in the last five years have embarked on 10th anniversary tours of what many of their fans consider to be seminal records. Senses Fail is getting ready to do the same for Let it Enfold You, but if you look at their setlists, they have always been accustomed to playing those tracks. Their most recent tour in support of their 2013 release Renacer featured no less than seven Let if Enfold You numbers each night; it’s a testament to how essential those numbers are, and how pivotal they were in helping the band break into the mainstream.

Tracks like "Bite to Break Skin” and the title track are staples, much in the way that “187” was their “Born to Run” up until they retired it last year. While subsequent years have brought good tidings and popularity to the Ridgewood, New Jersey natives, nothing has trumped 2004 and the popularity this record gained. Compared to their seminal EP From the Depths of Dreams and their subsequent releases, there was no proper balance greater than the mix of hardcore and melodic angst that this record delivered. Buddy Nielsen’s pension for dropping literary references and spec script lyrics for musical CSI-inspired stories was clever and uncanny at its best. The record’s strength and longevity doesn’t take away from any of the music that has come since — in fact, it has acted as a template that the band, through all of its personnel changes, has used to deliver album after album of rich, distinct and often brooding numbers that only they can call their own. – Jason Stives

How Let It Enfold You changed the band’s future

I just scrolled through Senses Fail’s discography by release. It tells an interesting story that may work better from a distance than in real time, but it works. From The Depths Of Dreams is cluttered, but impactful, especially for a young listener. It’s more “emo” in the mid-2000s Jersey sense of the word, and the glimpses of aggression and hardcore stylings are more than there, but not fully realized.

Let It Enfold You, however, is that perfect mix. It changed the band’s future because, up until Renacer, a formula was fully realized in a not-boring way while always becoming somehow a little more aggressive. Senses Fail really owned, and to me, still own the very slimly appreciated space between heavier emo and post-hardcore music (or today, what could be called metalcore).



I think, though am not sure, that Still Searching is the “biggest” Senses Fail album, but to me the true foundation for the rest of the band’s career was built off of Let It Enfold You. – Zack Zarrillo

What’s one thing you’d want everyone to know about this record that they may not already know?

I am not really sure what one thing I would want everyone to know about this record. I think everything about it has been revealed to this point. We made something that, to this day, people enjoy. I am very pleased and thankful to have been a part of it. – Buddy Nielsen