As Flaming Wrekage’s brutal fourth album tickles your earholes, you know this is something special. …
It’s quite likely that you’ll remember Architects dropping Classic Symptoms of a Broken Spirit.
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Whilst the album reached the number one spot on the ARIA charts, earning the English metalcore stalwarts their highest ranking position in the Australian charts, it was certainly a divisive release. While some fans revelled in the group’s departure from their post-hardcore roots, embracing the newly adopted industrial soundscapes and anthemic arena inspired choruses, others did not, claiming that the band’s new sound and the fact that vocalist Sam Carter is now donning eyeliner as a clear indication that the band are now ‘sellouts.’
Well, in typical Architects fashion, Carter is certainly packing a retort to the naysayers out there, and to give you a pre-warning, he doesn’t really care what you think.
“Man, it’s really weird,” he laughs, “people have these opinions about someone that they don’t know or have never met, and it makes them outraged. It’s like, fuck off and leave me alone, I’m just living my life and that stuff makes me happy, you don’t have to like it.”
And not a truer word has been spoken, with Carter’s face visibly glowing with excitement once he got talking about the creative process behind the group’s tenth studio album, Classic Symptoms of a Broken Spirit.
“It’s funny actually, when we’re doing this record, you’d spend so much time trying to find this perfect vibe, or chorus, or just a perfect sound, and it’s when you’re doing that that something else pop’s up. It’s almost as if you get so hyper focused on one song that you’re just not getting to work, and then in the meantime you’ve written three other songs while you were focusing on that.”
When asked if he believes if “the perfect sound” actually exists, Carter immediately laughs and firmly states “no.”
“It’s hard to say though, especially as a writer, but I don’t think we will ever find a place where we think we’ve got this perfect, pliable sound, because I think that’s what keeps you creating and writing, and you always want to be doing that.”
“In terms of other people’s songs, I mean, The Beatles are pretty fucking good, they’ve got a few moments that I’d call perfect.”
“But, I think that’s what the joy of writing is, that you’re constantly trying to create something better than before, you’re just on this loop. Maybe one day when the band is done I’ll look back and go, ‘that was a good song, that was a perfect song.’ But until then, you just have to constantly be trying to better what you’ve already done.”
Man, it’s really weird, people have these opinions about someone that they don’t know or have never met, and it makes them outraged. It’s like, fuck off and leave me alone, I’m just living my life and that stuff makes me happy, you don’t have to like it.
[ Sam Carter ]
An ethos that Architects have adopted in all realms of the band, with the group’s upcoming Australian tour debuting the bands newly adopted show, which sees industrial inspired soundscapes combined seamless transitions and spectacular visual components into an arena sized spectacle. Speaking of the newly adopted show that Architects will be bringing down under, Carter said,
“There’s so many fucking bands in the world that set up their stages in a similar way so it’s important to always be trying to be innovative, or to be doing something new. And yes, it’s fucking hard because everyone’s already done everything. But it’s nice to try and think outside the box.”
“And it’s been great so far. We’ve actually got our friend Ryan joining us for this touring cycle and he’s playing keys and doing a lot of extra stuff, because as we previously spoke about, there are so many layers and electronics and you don’t just want them to be played through a backing track, that’s not our vibe.
“It’s been really fun pushing ourselves into that world and taking some of the old songs and adding new bits and layers to them to sort of fill them out as well. But on the last tour we did, it was actually some of the newer songs that were my favourite moments of the night. Playing songs like ‘when we were young’ and deep fake, the places have been going off, so it’s been really fun so far.”
With the group’s first Australian headliner tour since 2019 kicking off in two weeks, the excitement has certainly been buzzing from both fans and the band alike, with Carter specifying that Australia will always be seen as a second home for Architects.
“It was really acts like Parkway Drive and The Amity Affliction that really helped us breakthrough in Australia, we did so much touring, and so many different support slots and worked really hard in doing so. But we were incredibly lucky that we got that leg up from those big Australian bands. It kind of feels like we were kind of adopted as an Australian band. It’s somewhere we always feel welcome.”
Architects will be kicking off their tour of the bands second home in two weeks time, bringing along the likes of Thornhill and Counterparts to share the stage with the group as they tick off some of their largest Australian venues to date.
Catch Architects with Thornhill and Counterparts at the following dates:
Friday Feb 17 // AEC Theatre // Adelaide
Saturday Feb 18 // Festival Hall // Melbourne
Sunday Feb 19 // Hordern Pavilion // Sydney
Wednesday Feb 22 // Fortitude Music Hall // Brisbane
