Lacey Sturm released Kenotic Metanoia worldwide on November 17, 2023. Her second solo album followed 2016’s Life Screams and arrived after a summer of reunion performances with Flyleaf. Alongside that return to her former band’s catalog, she was bringing several years of solo songwriting into one independent release.
“Reconcile” made the album’s inward focus particularly explicit. In comments published by HM Magazine, Sturm connected division to pride and the habit of concentrating on other people’s faults. “How do we reconcile the world if we’re not reconciled within ourselves?” she asked. Her husband Josh Sturm’s guitar work accompanied a song whose argument began with the person singing it. She also described how cultivating peace within herself affected her relationships with her children, family and friends.
That examination of the self also shaped the album’s title. It drew on the Greek concepts of emptying the self and undergoing a deep change. In Sturm’s account, recognizing a truth carried a responsibility to respond to it, even when that meant giving up a familiar version of yourself. “All these songs have been for my own heart,” she said in the album’s release announcement. She compared her writing to the Psalms: a way of addressing her own soul and reminding herself of what she believed.
The album gathered five singles that had appeared across three years. “The Decree” came out in 2020, followed by “State of Me” and “Awaken Love” in 2021. “Reconcile” and the Lindsey Stirling collaboration “Breathe With Me” followed in 2023. Ten additional tracks completed the record, giving those earlier songs a place within a 15-track sequence.
Josh’s involvement extended to songwriting and production. On “Are You Listening” and “Not Your Fight,” Lacey and Josh shared writing credits with Skillet’s Korey Cooper, while Josh produced both recordings. The songs Sturm described as personal reminders had taken shape through a shared writing process.
“Breathe With Me” brought Stirling’s violin into that process. The song began with writing and initial recording at Howard Benson’s studio in Los Angeles, and Josh completed the track. In the single’s release announcement, Lacey recalled Stirling contributing different melodies and ideas in the studio.
The collaboration also shared the album’s spiritual focus. Lacey described breathing as a way to become present and remember a spiritual existence beyond the physical world. Stirling’s childhood fascination with whales, creatures that live underwater but must surface for air, provided a related image. It connected the two artists through the song’s meaning as well as its arrangement.
In June 2024, a deluxe edition added early demos made with Josh and Korey, plus three live recordings from Sturm’s SiriusXM Octane quarantine session. It put those earlier working versions alongside the album they helped shape.
