Replacing a singer is the hardest thing a band can do. Crystal Lake did it in the most public way possible, and the result was a three-year chapter worth setting down accurately.
The Audition
After Ryo Kinoshita left in September 2022, Crystal Lake opened auditions for a new vocalist. About 250 people applied. On 11 March 2023 the band announced its choice: John Robert Centorrino, previously the vocalist of the American band The Last Ten Seconds of Life.
It was a striking decision. One of Japan’s leading metalcore bands had hired a frontman from an overseas band — not as a guest, but as a full member. The new lineup went straight to large stages, appearing at Megaport Festival in Taiwan and Knotfest Japan at the start of April 2023.
The Album
The record from this period is The Weight of Sound, released on 23 January 2026 through Century Media Records, with John on lead vocals. It was Crystal Lake’s first studio album since Helix in 2018.
The singles came out over a long stretch: “BlüdGod” in May 2024, then “Crossing Nails,” the title track and “Neversleep” across the second half of 2025. The guest list reads like a map of the international scene the band had joined, with vocalists from Signs of the Swarm, Left to Suffer, Volumes and Misery Signals, plus Jesse Leach of Killswitch Engage.
The Ending
On 31 March 2026, two months after the album’s release, the band announced that John was leaving. The reason was family. The band explained that the international distances and the schedule had made it increasingly difficult for him to balance touring with his responsibilities as a father. The band said its confirmed shows would go ahead with guest vocalists.
On 21 August 2026, Crystal Lake announced a new singer: PK, the Korean vocalist of the Tokyo metalcore band Prompts.
How to Read It
It would be easy to call this a failed experiment. It wasn’t. A Japanese band recruited across an ocean, made an album for a major metal label with that lineup, and parted on stated, human terms. The limit was geography, and nobody pretended otherwise.
Through all of it, one person has stayed in place: founding guitarist YD. The Weight of Sound is the document of the John years. Hear it as that.
