aaamusic | On 22, Jan 2011

The devil may have many names, but equally a rose by any other name may smell just as sweet. And with that appropriately portentous opening, I say hello screamo/hardcore/metalcore/post-hardcore, we meet again. Anyone who has followed my reviews may note I have a love-hate relationship with this style of music. However, with Architects’ latest release ‘The Here And Now’, I feel that a valuable contribution to the genre has been made. Blending punky metalcore fury with poppy hooks and choruses, this band have created something that you can tell the kids to turn the volume down on with pride.

Even with opener ‘Day In Day Out’, I am led to believe this album has ingredients of a winner. A searing cymbal/kick drum driven intro throws us into the tense, wiry guitar sound of a real post-hardcore barnstormer, with equal amounts of intensity and musical prowess. Tempo changes are measured to great impact, and the vocalist is in possession of a cast-iron yet controlled scream. And guess what? The soaring clean-vocals moments feel like the song’s natural progression, not awkward sing-along moments. Take oddly-titled ‘The Blues’, where the double-tracked clean vocals add punch and dynamic to the searing screeches as opposed to smothering them. Indeed, Architects have realised that you can in fact combine technical metal fretwork and cavernous schizophrenic bass drum with humanly-recognisable voices to create impact and not just a song structure.

‘Learn To Live’ boots the tumultuous metallic overtones of the band’s sound into the fore, with thundering drums and rapidfire, spiralling guitarwork. Stop-start verse dynamics are contrasted brilliantly with expansive pre-chorus and gang vocals choruses that urge the listener to sing along. The lyricism directly addresses the outcasts and misfits in a manner that does in fact appeal, with a marching-song bridge that is slightly contrived but far from cringeworthy.

But the accessibility retreats to hide on the moshpit thrasher ‘Delete, Rewind’, with features one of the most genuinely malignant guitar riffs I have heard on a post-hardcore record for a while, and the powerful screamed vocals make your throat hurt just listening to them as they savagely burst from the speakers. It gets a little Muse towards the end, but this is easily forgiven in the context of ‘BTN’s total brutality, tempered by tender clean-vocals moments amid the total chaotic maelstrom of the music, with stilted metallic drumming and feverish hardcore-influenced guitars. There’s a great amount of subtlety hidden in the madness, not merely in the quiet-loud sections, but melodically we have hooks buried in riffs and vice-versa, all complimented by the hell-on-earth surroundings.

There are slower moments of introspection to be found, with gauzy emo-tinged ballads like ‘An Open Letter To Myself’ and ‘Heartburn’ bringing to mind a worthwhile Youmeatsix. Lilting, lyrical guitar builds up the heartstrings around angsty lyrics into an explosive catharsis, and a subtle shoegaze-inspired echo steeps the tracks in intrigue. I’d have to say that the latter edges too close to cliché stadium rock blandness for my tastes, but it is a valiant stab nonetheless. The atmospheric intro (with expansive drums and bass rumbles) and claustrophobic yet controlled melodies of ‘Red Eyes’ shows the band’s ability to vary their sound to great effect. Pools of placid hopelessness blend with cathartic pounding and both pay off their own merits, and the lyrics aren’t exactly eloquent but in possession of their own power.

And with this, we are bought full circle with the pop-edged (and yes the pop is in fact an edge) ‘Year In Year Out’ with alternates between what sounds like Metal Militia’s sound system having a cardiac arrest and recognisably human expression.

As with most post-hardcore, ‘The Here And Now’ will inevitably polarise listeners. On the one hand it has at least one foot firmly entrenched in a teenage audience and there is the dogged ghost of sounding a bit like Youmeatsix at times, especially in the periodical stadium rock pitfalls. However, to counter this, teenagers need something with genuine power to listen to and enjoy, and Architects’ blend of ferocity, technical skill and flair for creating genuinely well-balanced songs means that post-hardcore, whatever it may be calling itself next week, is in reliable and promising hands.

Author: Katie H-Halinski