“Unless a child of mine wants to make another one one day, this is the last one I’m gonna make,” Jakob Nowell said, putting a timestamp on the new Sublime record as it arrives Friday, June 12. The frontman framed Until the Sun Explodes as a deliberate finish line — an epilogue to a long story he never expected to be part of.
The album arrives after a run of singles that have already connected with listeners: the pair of alt-rock tracks Ensenada and Until the Sun Explodes. Nowell described the record as a conscious capstone. “I would want Until the Sun Explodes to feel like epilogue, the victory lap, a celebration of Sublime’s history and a love letter to my father and all of his friends and the scene that raised me and touched so many people’s lives,” he said.
That positioning matters because it comes from a singer who only joined Sublime’s ranks in 2023, when original bandmates Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh welcomed him into the lineup. Nowell said he never thought he would record an album with Sublime and that the songs grew organically: “Truth be told, we just kept playing together at rehearsals and soundchecks. We’re all very jam-oriented musicians, so we’d have these little parts we’d return to that started to sound like they could be (new songs) and it seemed natural to move forward with that.”
Nowell’s announcement also sets expectations for what comes after the release. He said he plans to keep playing “a few Sublime shows every year,” and the band will immediately support the record with a string of dates: San Diego’s Petco Park on Saturday, June 14; the Park Stage in Freehold, New Jersey on June 19; the Point Break Festival in Virginia Beach next weekend; a Portland festival at Tom McCall Waterfront Park on June 27; and a Salt Lake City festival at Zions Bank Stadium on July 18. The group has also promoted a Sublime-branded cruise, the Sublime Reefer Madness Cruise, slated to sail in November.
But Nowell was explicit that the studio future he envisions is different. “I think you have to know your goals, set out to achieve them and, if you do, you must then create new goals,” he said, and added that he wants to “carry the flag forward in different ways now.” That means his creative energy will tilt back toward his own project, Jakobs Castle, which he had been building before joining Sublime.
There’s a natural tension in Nowell’s remarks. He framed Until the Sun Explodes as a one-off conclusion and said he’s proud of achieving what he once thought impossible — yet he also left a sliver of possibility open: “My feeling could change in the future. But it would be enough into the future where it would be a moot point.” Practically, that reads as a firm decision with a far-off, hypothetical escape hatch rather than a genuine plan to continue recording full Sublime albums.
For fans the difference is simple. The new record is being presented as a celebration and a capstone, not the start of a multi-album revival. For Nowell it offers closure and a way to honor family and the scene that raised him. “I love doing this and it’s truly healed me in many ways and allowed me to grow as an entertainer and performer,” he said, and then outlined what comes next: passing along the torch and helping younger musicians try to do something similar.
So the practical answer to whether Jakob Nowell will make another Sublime studio album is this: likely not. He will continue to perform with Sublime on tour and at select events, he will nurture Jakobs Castle as his principal creative outlet, and any future Sublime record with him at the helm would be, by his own account, a distant and unlikely afterthought — unless the unlikely, generational caveat he offered ever comes true.
