ARCHSPIRE // Future Bleed Machine

Most extreme metal bands have very little time for award shows. Even if they happen to be nominated, it’s unlikely they’ll go home with the prize, especially if they’re going up against more well known or accessible artists.

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So Archspire drummer Spencer Prewett admits complete surprise when his band won the Juno Award for Metal/Hard Music Album of the Year for Bleed the Future over acts like Spiritbox and Danko Jones.

“We just assumed that [Spiritbox] was going to win,” he says with an easy-going grin. “I wasn’t even watching the awards when it got announced. My girlfriend at the time called me, I was out having sushi with a friend, and she called and she was just screaming on the phone. I couldn’t even understand what she was saying!”

Archspire’s 2017 album Relentless Mutation was also nominated for the Canadian industry award. Even though they didn’t win on that occasion, it says a lot about the country that such an extreme band would even make it that far through the nomination process.

“It was a surprise and it was awesome, and really – how cool is Canada, to recognise an extreme death metal band?” He laughs. “It’s a big deal in Canada, it’s like our Grammys. We were surprised because our music is so extreme. The coolest thing about winning a Juno is, now your parents take you seriously!”

Canada takes its death metal scene seriously too, obviously. With a rich heritage of extremity going back decades, it’s probably no real surprise that the Great White North respects their metal heritage. Being nominated for and then winning the country’s biggest music award underscores Archspire’s belief in themselves too. Early in their career, the Vancouver based act considered moving east to be closer to Canada’s death metal heartland.

“There’s been so many good extreme metal bands come out of Canada, and 9 out of 10 times it’s Montreal, honestly,” the drummer says. “Beyond Creation, Beneath the Massacre, of course Cryptopsy… Kataklysm, all these big death metal bands out of there. For us, [winning the Juno] was cool, because we’re all the way over here on the west coast, Vancouver, and there’s not a lot of big bands come out of here. Especially death metal bands, so it’s cool for us. When we were younger, we gave serious thought to moving to Montreal because we wanted to make it playing death metal and we thought we wouldn’t have those opportunities over here, but it worked out pretty good.”

That’s when we started touring the world and getting in front of some bigger acts. Definitely the new one was leaps and bounds ahead as far as popularity of the band goes.
[ Spencer Prewett – Archspire ]

Archspire have been making their way upwards in the world of extreme technical death metal since Relentless Mutation muscled its way onto Billboard’s Heatseeker and Independent Album charts six years ago. Heavy plaudits followed. 

“I’d say Relentless Mutation was our first really big album,” Prewitt says. “That’s when we started touring the world and getting in front of some bigger acts. Definitely the new one was leaps and bounds ahead as far as popularity of the band goes.”

The band has seen a big spike in their streaming numbers since Bleed the Future was released, and has also witnessed a surge in audience size. Prewitt isn’t sure exactly what to put that type of increase down to, but he isn’t exactly complaining.

“How much can you chalk up the success of the band to the last album and how much to the phenomenon of people realising [that] shows can be taken away all of a sudden?” he asks. “No one saw that coming. It’s almost like when… people who live a negative, grumpy life and then have a near-death experience kind of realise that you can lose everything, and you’re whole value system changes, and you should concentrate on positive things in life. I know a lot of bands saw a bump in numbers after COVID, because people were so starved to see shows and appreciate the ability to see shows because of that.”

As it did for everyone, COVID forced Archspire off the road, and like it did for every professional touring band, that meant they were out of pocket without their usual means of support. While they “were obviously really scared about how we were going to make ends meet,” Prewitt explains that being from Canada left them better off than most.

“Every Canadian citizen got $2000 a month for a year and a half, or something,” he recalls. “On top of that, if you’re a registered company and you showed that COVID had destroyed your revenue stream, they would give a few payments to float your company. A touring band is right up the alley for a company without a revenue stream!”

They also got to work on Bleed the Future, and were able to give it the time it really needed. With COVID cancelling everything, they went into writing mode and realised that the time they would have normally allocated to that process.

“It takes us way longer to write, and if we had gone out on the road so much, we would not have been able to concentrate so much on making that last album. So in that way it was a bit of a blessing in disguise.”

Lockdowns meant they often couldn’t jam together, of course, so Prewett would write drum parts for the guitarists to embellish, and vice versa. Then everyone in the band has to agree on everything, before the song moves forward.

“Everyone has to agree on every part!” Prewett says with a chuckle. “It’s rare that anybody comes in with an idea and it doesn’t get changed by everybody. Everybody’s input is on every part of every song and during COVID, not being able to be in the same room together, that made that really challenging.”

Getting everyone to agree is only part of the process for Archspire. The band record every separate part, often several times, listen to them over and over, rework different parts as they sink in, get rid of others. It’s no wonder their music is so intricate and precise, it was studied by AI software.

“Generally we’ll put together a few parts, or half a song, and then listen back to it for two weeks, and after that your brain has had time to process it. Sometimes by the time we go into the studio, that’s the fourth time recording that song. And of course when you’re in the studio, you have a producer, Dave Otero, and now you have another person’s opinion who’s not playing an instrument. A fresh set of ears and somebody who isn’t biased to any of the parts.”

Archspire is bringing their ferocious technical assault to Australia once more in mid-October. It will be another in a recent spate of death metal tours that have filled venues around the country. Teaming up with them will be Melbourne trio Werewolves, and Manchester’s Ingested, whom Archspire shared stages with over the European summer.

“We played shows with them in Europe and it was the first time we’d played with them… definitely the first time we met them. They’re really nice. Very British!” Prewett laughs. “And I love the music too. It’s catchy and it’s brutal and it just kind of made sense to pair the two bands together for a tour.”