The final page was supposed to close in February, but NOVULENT apparently had a few lines left scribbled in the margins. The Texas alternative force returns this week with VOL. 3 (Deluxe), expanding the last installment of their coming-of-age trilogy into a 16-track body of work wrapped in reimagined, manga-inspired artwork. Alongside the recently released “self destruct,” the deluxe edition introduces two rare collaborations with fellow distortion dwellers ivri and ThxSoMch, each offering an alternate ending to a story that has spent three records tracing love as it rises, fractures, and leaves debris behind.

“VOL. 3 (Deluxe) is the end of my coming-of-age story,” Novulent shares. “I’m not sad it’s over, but I’m also not happy. All I know is whatever life does to me, I’ll power through it and do my best to comfort those dealing with what I’ve gone through. I don’t do collaborations often, but I might as well go out with a bang.” And truthfully, these additions do not feel like leftovers stuck onto a reissue; they feel like the emotional aftershock that arrives once you thought the ground had finally stopped breaking beneath you.

“two sides” gives the relationship at the center of the trilogy another voice, pairing NOVULENT with ivri across a dark duet where two people stand on opposite ends of the same wreckage. By the final lines – “Everything we had’s been destroyed / I can’t hear you through all the noise” – the song feels less like an argument and more like the exhausted silence that follows one, when both people have finally run out of ways to save what is already gone. “scorched earth,” featuring Canadian post-punk artist ThxSoMch, takes the aftermath somewhere even harsher, laying mutually assured destruction over guitars that sound like they are melting through the floor.

Those songs fit naturally inside a trilogy that began with 2023’s VOL. 1 and its Gold-certified breakout “scars,” where back-to-back breakups shattered NOVULENT’s view of love, before VOL. 2 became something closer to a private conversation with their past self. VOL. 3 never pretended healing made the story clean; it lived in the grey, balancing personal reflection with vulnerable narrative and accepting that after a breakup, nobody’s hands remain spotless.

That story now stretches beyond the speakers as NOVULENT carries the final album era back onto the road. Following their largest United States headline run yet with a full band, they will appear at Austin’s LEVITATION festival on September 12 before joining Clarion for another North American sweep through Fresno, Berkeley, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, and more, then crossing into Europe and the United Kingdom for a winter headline run. Songs like “new low,” “dysphoria,” “sweet revenge,” and “boys like and girls steal” have built NOVULENT’s bright-black universe from shoegaze haze, post-punk bite, and dream-pop melancholy, but hearing them live gives every bruise a little more weight.

VOL. 3 (Deluxe) may officially end the coming-of-age trilogy, yet it hardly sounds like an artist disappearing after the credits. It feels like NOVULENT standing in the scorched remains of one story, turning toward whatever survives next.