Turnstile Album Review: Is Never Enough Worth It?

Turnstile Album Review Released June 6, 2025 on Roadrunner Records, Never Enough is Turnstile’s fourth full-length album and their first in four years, following the breakout success of Glow On, which earned the Baltimore band four Grammy nominations and turned them from a beloved hardcore-scene act into something closer to mainstream rock stars. The album was recorded between Los Angeles and the band’s home base in Baltimore, produced by vocalist Brendan Yates himself.

It’s also the first Turnstile album without founding guitarist Brady Ebert, who departed in 2022. The current lineup, Yates on vocals and synth, Franz Lyons on bass, Pat McCrory and Meg Mills on guitar, and Daniel Fang on drums, sounds cohesive rather than transitional, which isn’t always a given after a lineup change this significant.

How It Actually Sounds

In my experience, bands that break through with an album as beloved as Glow On tend to go one of two ways on the follow-up: retreat to safer, more recognizable territory, or lean further into whatever made the last record distinctive. Turnstile chose the second path, and it mostly pays off. Hardcore is still the album’s foundation, with plenty of the overdriven guitar and throat-shredding vocal work that built the band’s reputation. Tracks like “Sole” and “Birds” nod directly back to their earlier, rawer material.

But the album’s real identity comes from how far it reaches beyond that foundation. Bright, pop-facing melodies show up constantly, sometimes backed by synths that would sound completely out of place on a typical hardcore record but somehow work here. What tends to surprise first-time listeners is how accessible the record is despite its hardcore bones. This isn’t a band softening its sound to chase a bigger audience so much as a band that’s always seen hardcore as a foundation to build on rather than a set of rules to follow.

Critical Reception

The reception has been overwhelmingly positive, with a handful of notable dissenting voices worth mentioning. NME gave the album a perfect score, praising how it doubles down on Glow On’s eccentricity, and outlets like Kerrang!, DIY, and Dork all landed in similarly glowing territory, with DIY calling it ambitious and cathartic in equal measure. Pitchfork was more measured, landing at 7.8, still a strong score but a sign the record’s ambition doesn’t land equally for every critic.

That range in scoring is worth flagging directly. A few reviewers, including outlets like Northern Transmissions, noted the album occasionally feels overcooked in its search for scope, with some tracks feeling more focused on being huge rock songs than staying anchored to the band’s hardcore roots. That’s a fair critique and one worth knowing going in if you were hoping for something closer to a straight hardcore record. This is an album reaching for something bigger, and reaching that far occasionally means a track or two doesn’t stick the landing as cleanly as the album’s best moments do.

Standout Moments

The title track is a genuine highlight and a smart choice as the lead single, opening the album’s sonic palette right away with the kind of bright, synth-backed pre-chorus melody that signals early on this isn’t going to be a one-note hardcore record. “Magic Man” closes things out on a similarly radiant note, and more than one review specifically calls out the way the album is bookended by these two tracks as a deliberate, effective structural choice.

For listeners who came to Turnstile through Glow On’s more melodic, genre-blending moments rather than its harder-edged tracks, Never Enough leans further in that direction overall, which will likely please that segment of the fanbase more than the purists hoping for a return to something closer to the band’s earliest work.

How It Compares to Glow On

This comparison is unavoidable, and it’s worth being direct about it. Glow On was the record that proved Turnstile’s genre experimentation could work at scale, blending hardcore with go-go rhythms and even an R&B collaboration with Blood Orange. Never Enough takes that same experimental spirit and pushes it further rather than repeating the formula. If Glow On felt like proof of concept, several critics, including Kerrang!, described Never Enough as the fully realized version of that vision.

That said, don’t expect Never Enough to feel like a direct continuation in terms of specific sounds. It’s less about recreating Glow On’s specific highlights and more about applying that same willingness to experiment to new textures and songwriting choices. If you’re hoping for “Glow On part two,” this isn’t quite that, and that’s mostly a good thing.

Who Should Listen to This

If you’re already a Turnstile fan coming off Glow On, this is close to essential listening, and one of the stronger rock records of 2025 by most critical accounts. If you’re new to the band and hardcore isn’t usually your genre, this is actually a reasonable entry point specifically because of how much melodic, accessible material sits alongside the heavier tracks. You don’t need a hardcore background to get something out of this record.

If you’re a longtime hardcore purist who wanted Turnstile to stay closer to their earliest, rawer work, this might frustrate you more than Glow On did, since the pop and melodic elements are even more pronounced here. That’s a legitimate reason to approach this one with tempered expectations rather than a reason to skip it outright.