Bring Me The Horizon, Parkway Drive, Architects GIG REVIEW 26/4/2011 @Nottingham Rock City

Architects may have caused some distaste among fans for appearing on Radio One’s daytime playlist, but tonight’s set shows why they don’t care about criticism. They have enough fans who love what they’re doing. Launching straight into Day in, Day out from the new album, it’s clear they love playing the new stuff live.

Sam Carter has a real connection with the crowd constantly talking to them and making everyone engage with him fully, making everyone wave their arms side to side. Not what an Architects gig would have looked like in 2007.

Heartache sounded like a ballad but was a real celebratory moment when the crowd sang along in unison. They may have swapped brutal metal for beautiful melodies, but they still know how to put on an engaging show. The guitarist looks out to the crowd with confidence, proving this is a band comfortable in their new found skin. Even those clearly waiting for the headliners take the time to watch the whole set.

At one point Sam asks everyone to sit on someone’s shoulders, and quite comically even the men do it.But they don’t alienate the old fans completely, and conclude the set with heavier songs, Hollow Crown and Early Grave, which certainly puts a few smiles on people’s faces.

They may have gone for a more mellow sound these days, but the same can’t be said for their ambition.


The Parkway Drive boys are clearly gaining more recognition, proved when loud cheers erupt before they even come on stage. There’s a roar of excitement when the melodic intro starts and everyone looks more than ready to get involved. But Parkway Drive fans rarely stand there looking pretty and within seconds moshing and barging into people begins. Unfortunately the momentum of the circle pits never seem to last and front man Winston McCall had to keep shouting at the crowd to ‘pick it up’. But with more heavy breakdowns, the crowd finally show Rock City what they’ve got. With a mix of hardcore and metal it can be quite comical watching fans in the pit, with some doing windmills while others simply want to push you as hard as possible.

Having mainly played tracks from the last two albums throughout the set, it was a nice surprise to hear Romance is Dead off the band’s debut album. The great thing about Parkway Drive is that the new stuff goes down just as well as the old, proving that working with producer Joe Barresi has paid off. It was a short set and didn’t have as much variation of material as seen at their headlining shows but highlights included Sleepwalker and Boneyards.

There are no egos in this band. Instead, constant smiles in between songs show this band is loving every minute. The fans even sing along to the riffs in Carrion, a slower song which always gets a massive sing along. Once again, Parkway Drive killed it.


With a black curtain covering the stage, it was clear from the offset that Bring Me The Horizon were planning to do something a bit special. As soon as they came on, the curtain dropped and smoke filled the stage as they launched into It Never Ends from their latest album.

The crowd jumps in unison to track Fuck while Oli Sykes comically makes a wanking motion with his hands. Showing his fans mean everything to him, he puts his hand out to them before running to the far left of the stage to sing to a group of girls. There’s an obvious difference between the bands new and old material. At first it almost feels like a different band when they play tracks off Suicide Season but songs like Alligator Blood combine the two styles. Live favourites Diamonds Aren’t Forever and Chelsea Smile show how much the band’s sound has evolved on the new album.

Oli then took the moment to ask the crowd what song they wanted to hear next. After a few minutes of inaudible shouting they play Pray for Plagues off their debut album.
Whatever you think of Oli, his captivating command on stage cannot be denied. When he shouts circle pit, that’s exactly what happens. Surprisingly they actually look more brutal than the pits seen for Parkway Drive.

Architects vocalist, Sam Carter, joins Oli on stage for The Sadness Will Never End, a track they recorded together on Suicide Season. They make a great duo and it’s one of the highlights of the set.

The crowd then proceed to put their lighters up for Blessed With A Curse followed by a dozen black balloons dropping down from the ceiling. The band’s name then lights up in huge letters. This may be egoistical to some but its proof the band is starting to take their shows seriously.

Above all, it’s clear Oli is glad to be here. He puts a peace sign up to a fan before hitting the balloons back into the crowd with a smile on his face.
At one point the whole crowd copy the illuminati symbol showing that the fans will do pretty much anything Oli tells them to.

The great thing about the band is their ability to create different moods within minutes. Oli dedicates Suicide Season to lost family and friends but it doesn’t take him long to put people in a good mood again. Making a comical reference to the pissing on a fan controversy in 2007, Oli says: “You guys have been so good, I want to piss on all of you.”

Despite the set being almost over, Oli increases momentum as though he has just come on stage, demanding wall of deaths and circle pits before stage diving into the crowd.

The encore ends with Oli making everyone sit down, even people stood at the back behind the sound desk. They may have had bad press and divided people with their emo-shouting metalcore before, but tonight they were a different band. Even if you’re not really a fan, they certainly put on a memorable show.

Why Architects have more integrity for 'selling out'....

Architects were once in the same league as metal bands like Suicide Silence, with brutal riffs inspired by Dillinger Escape Plan. Now they’ve written an album that will ‘lift the spirits’ with fans singing along to feel-good ballads. Radio One has even put their music on the day time playlist, and they’ll play Leeds and Reading festival for the first time this summer.

So what are the secrets to their success? Currently on tour with Bring Me The Horizon and Parkway Drive, their music is still heavy but with melodic influences. They may have lost some fans, but they don’t care what people think about them. I spoke to guitarist Tim Searle about the bands integrity, the highs of touring and the next album.

Inevitably perspective on life changes so do you think this has this influenced the change of sound?
The sound has changed because we’ve grown up and matured as people and as musicians and our influences have changed in the same way. And perspective does change, you know when we were younger we practised our instruments loads, I’m not saying we don’t now but we just wanted to use it as best as we could, playing really fast and technical. Now it’s more about writing good songs and taking influences from bands that we listen to now, which is nowhere near the same heavy technical stuff that we used to.

The theme on the record is really making the most of life, why is that important to the band?
We’re in a very fortunate position. You meet a lot of people in bands who are touring beautiful countries in parts of the world most people never get to go to. When people complain about it, it genuinely makes me really mad and the sentiment is the same for everyone else in our band. We’re so lucky that we get to travel the entire planet, playing our instruments in front of people who love our music and as a result of that, you have to embrace every day. You never know when things can go wrong, you could lose a family member or it could all stop and you have to enjoy life and take a positive view on it.

With a lot of heavy bands, the whole message is doom and gloom and negativity and to be in a heavy band you don’t necessarily have to be negative. The point is to be more positive and live for the now.

Your bassist recently left the band, why and what does this mean for the future line up?
He left due to some heavy family commitments and we could do nothing other than to respect his decision. We all miss him being in the band a huge amount but he’s doing what he has to do and he knows he’s made the right choice. We respect him doing that and we’re still all really good mates and hang out when we’re not on tour and stuff. In terms of what it changes for the band it just means we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing until we find a permanent replacement.

We have a couple of fill ins that we’re using at the moment. Inevitably we will get somebody else and it won’t be the same as having Ali in the band but you take situations as they come and make the best of them. That’s exactly what we’re doing and everything’s going great at the moment.

The sound is more melodic which is obviously the band trying to push boundaries, so are you listening to more melodic music at the moment?
Absolutely. If someone said to me to listen to The Red Chord or Coldplay, it’s a no brainer. I much prefer well written catchy songs. People give us a lot of shit for selling out but I feel completely the opposite. I feel that by being more melodic, we are keeping our integrity more because we’re doing exactly what we want to do. We write the music that we want to listen to and that’s not necessarily heavy and technical music anymore. A lot of people have a hard time getting their heads around that and that’s fine, don’t listen to our band anymore. But that’s what we’re about and what we want to do.

Congratulations on being put on Radio One’s daytime playlist but as you say some people see this as selling out. Do you think it’s sometimes necessary to do something your fans may not like?
Absolutely, we knew we were taking a huge risk with this new album. We knew there was going to be backlash and we knew it might not go down well with our fans. But we felt that we should take that risk because if we didn’t do exactly what we wanted to do and be more melodic and play the style of music that we wanted to play then that would just be pandering to our fans. That’s never what we’ve been about. We’ve always written what we want to write and done what we want to do and that’s just a continuation of that.
Did you feel confident working with producer Steve Evetts and what was the most impressive thing about working with him?
No I didn’t feel confident, in fact the complete opposite. The last two records we did before that, were with the same people that we were friends with and we were comfortable in our environment. So going to another country, meeting someone new and using methods that we’d never used before, was intimidating. As a band you work on these songs for however how long, you have band practise every week, making sure everything’s perfect. You go in there and have to change certain aspects to it and you’re taken out of your comfort zone.

We definitely learnt from the experience and it’s definitely changed our view on recording and pre-production. Working with Steve was great and it was a real eye-opening experience. We went with him because of his body of work and having done Everytime Time I Die and Dillinger Escape Plan and even bands like Saves the Day. He engineered a record by The Cure too and did loads of really interesting stuff. It was a great experience and I'm happy with the end result.

This album has been described as one that will lift peoples spirit, it important for you that the fans will take something positive from it?
Absolutely, the whole point of the record is for people to listen to it and understand where we are coming from. We’re a positive band with a positive message and we want people to enjoy themselves and have fun at our shows. We're not about moshing and people beating the shit out of each other. We're not about being negative. We're about people jumping up and down, singing along and having a good time and that's what going to shows and playing music is about. It's about enjoying yourself and that's essentially the whole point.

You are gaining more mainstream recognition, so what is it that makes Architects stand out?
We’re doing something different in terms of heavy music. We’re trying to have a positive message and we’re trying to push boundaries with our music in terms of the amount of melody but also still being a heavy band. A lot of people forget a lot of the songs are tuned in G# and have people like Greg from Dillinger Escape Plan singing on them, they’re still heavy. But getting a lot of mainstream attention for us is great because a lot of people, as I said, think we’re selling out, but the more attention we get, the more people like our band and the more people come to our shows. That means everyone has a better time and it’s positive for everyone.

Front man Sam Carter has done guest vocals for Bring Me The Horizon, Your Demise and Comeback Kid. Do you think this has opened up the band to a wider audience?
I think so but all of the bands he does guest vocals for are friends of ours and if he can contribute on his friends music, it’s just a cool thing to do. Likewise with Andrew from Comeback Kid, Sam sung with them and Andrew sung with us. It shows your appreciation for other bands and gets you involved with other people creatively and people might check out those bands if they haven’t heard of them.
Every night Sam will go out on stage with Oli and you can see that they are like best mates and on stage I think people really enjoy that because they don’t necessarily realise that people they consider famous are just normal people.

How did you feel when you were told you would have to delay the release of your record despite it being finished?
Absolutely furious. But at the same time the labels who work with bands know what they’re doing and for them it is a business, and as much as labels are often scape goats for things that go wrong with bands, I feel you’ve got to trust your label to a certain extent. They said they thought it would be the best thing and we argued with them a little bit and they got their point across and our manager got involved. We decided it would be the best thing in the long run. When you have your heart set on a record that you’ve been working on for ages, coming out a certain time, it was really frustrating to know we had to wait for a few months but in the end it worked out fine.

You released a split EP with Swans in between albums, is it important for you to keep you’re fans interested?
Yeah I think it is important. I think a lot of bands will gain success off an album and kind of roll off a little bit and forget that you need to keep people interested. If a band doesn’t release something in four years a lot of people will move on and find the next best thing. We do always try to keep people interested and I’m sure we’ll do the same thing in the future.

I heard around 80% of songs you write are never heard, that must be a lot of writing?
I don’t know necessarily it was 80%. What we mean by that is, you know if you go on the MySpace player you’ll hear the three singles and that’s all kids will ever listen to, it is annoying. Like when it was just vinyl, the only way you could really listen to it was to just sit down and listen to the whole thing. I wish that culture was still there. But a percentage like that does exist because people do just hear the singles. But hopefully people will come and see those songs live and be impressed with the other material and go and actually listen to the record.


You are quite a young band so what has been the most eye-opening thing?
We’re constantly doing things I never thought we’d do that completely blow my mind, like the places that we go and the people that we play with and the people that we meet. It’s kind of like a series of eye-opening things, like just little milestones. We’ve never really been a goal orientated band. We’ve always just taken every day as it goes. First time we were ever on a tour bus we were like “Oh my god we’re on a bus” and we went to Australia for the first time. And these things happen all the time so there's not really one thing that sticks in my mind. I’m sure next week I’ll get an email from someone and be like “fucking hell that’s mental.”

You once said that the music is for the band, and that it doesn’t belong to anyone. How do you think your fans see it?
I know it pisses off a lot of fans because they do think it’s their music and I think that’s absolutely mental because it’s not. You like a band for the music they play and write and if you start thinking it’s your band as a fan, like ‘I’ve invested in them because I’ve been following them a long time’ then as much as that’s cool that you support a band, you can’t get too overly involved in what you think your input is. At the end of the day, that’s not what our music is. For us, we write music that we think is good and we think other people will enjoy but we do what we want to do. And fans that get pissed off by us saying it’s our music and not theirs then let them be pissed off, because that’s just the truth.

Do you think playing Download festival helped your success?
Yes to an extent. I mean last time we played Download it was absolutely mental. We walked out on stage and the stage was absolutely packed and everyone was singing along and it completely blew my mind. Not necessarily helped us become a bigger band but it kind of reaffirmed in my mind that we had taken it up to that next level. It was kind of a more reassuring thing about the level of our success as opposed to one event that made us successful.

And now you’re playing the main stage of Leeds and Reading festival in August, any worries about how you’ll win the crowd over?
Yes I’m absolutely shitting myself about it because I’ve been going to Reading festival since 2002 and it’s been a childhood dream to play Reading, and now this year we’re doing it. I mean the list of things that could go wrong in a band like, technical problems, the crowd not liking it, it not sounding good, all of that is going to be going round my head a hundred miles an hour before we go on stage. That and my mum and dad are going to be at the side of the stage watching as well, so I will be absolutely terrified. I’m secretly quite cocky about how it’s going to go down. I think they are going to be really good shows for us and really important shows for us.

I know you’ve only recently released the current album, but having spoke about keeping fans interested, have you been thinking about the next album at all?
We have yeah and Tom’s been working on some demos recently. We actually have a few songs finished already, and we’re going to start putting them together in practise soon.
I think the main angle we’re going to go for with this album campaign, is to get some more videos. We’ve already done three for the album and we’re planning on doing a few more, and maybe a couple of them will be online exclusives. But we’re going to do a few more videos, and maybe we’ll release a B side or a single here and there. But Tom’s been working on new material and when the time comes we’ll have to make a toss up as to whether it’s all for an album or an EP as well. At this point I can’t say but ideas are floating around and something is in the works definitely.

Architects are currently on tour with Bring Me The Horizon, Parkway Drive and Devil Wears Prada.

“Anyone can start a hardcore band if you have a pair of glasses with no lenses, a pair of vans and some skinny denims on.”

*Photo by Alexander Bradley

Opinionated punk band Flats have been together for barely a year and have already divided people with their abrasive attitude and raucous sound. I spoke to them about what hardcore means to them and why Morrissey is such a big fan.



This is your first UK headline tour, so how is it going?
Dan- Yeah it’s alright. Could be better, could be far worse.
Samir- The London show was totally packed.
Dan- The London show was amazing. Although a good friend of mine got glassed from another friend of mine which isn’t cool. Kyle get better.
Craig- We just do not condone that at all.
Dan- At our shows especially. I want the attention on me.

Some people have said the punk elements of your music are reminiscent of bands like Black Flag, what would you say your influences were?
Dan- Yeah I’m a big Black Flag fan. As far as that Washington stuff goes I’m a big SSD fan. As for the British stuff, Discharge are one of our major influences. Like on the album there are two songs specifically wrote to sound like Discharge I suppose. But there are a lot of metal influences in it. When people think of metal you think of like Slayer and Metallica but I mean there is more obscure weird stuff like Hellhammer. We’re really big Hellhammer fans, a lot of the sludge stuff and slower stuff. When the Black Flag album ‘My War’ came out that sort of spawned that whole era of sludge bands like Eyehategod are a massive influence on us.
Craig- Bands like The Melvin’s we like. There’s a great band called Pentagram, like bands who were way ahead of their time.
Dan- They’re like the American Black Sabbath that no one knows about and nobody knew about them for years.

So what does hardcore music mean to you?
Dan- I don’t know, I mean we’re in a bit of a weird situation because some people would say that we’re a hardcore band but we don’t really move in hardcore circles. The hardcore scene in Britain at the moment is all about boys with sleeve tattoos and a pair of vans on. My definition of hardcore is like when Discharge came out and it was just about playing the hardest music you can and just going nuts but now it has become just this sort of, as much as in any other genre of music, it’s just become this sort of horrible pastiche caricature of itself. ..Anyone can start a hardcore band if you have a pair of glasses with no lenses, a pair of vans and some skinny denim’s on.

I mean do you think punk is still alive in the 21st century?
Dan- I think it is but I don’t think what people perceive it to be is what it actually is. I really like a band called Diet Pills from Leeds. They’re sort of my interpretation of hardcore at the moment but they don’t necessarily look like hardcore kids. They sound like The Jesus Lizard mixed with something like Iron Fist.
Craig- Current stuff that is quite popular in the hardcore scene, like last year Trash Talk was quite a big record for us...but it literally seems to be that unless you’re taking the cream of that scene a lot of the bands are sorting of painting by numbers really...Hardcore gets branded around as a description of our music but to be honest it’s not hardcore which is our main influence. It’s a lot more sort of punk stuff you know.
Dan- Yeah like a lot of anarcho stuff. I like The Damned. I like the Sex Pistols, just because it’s funny classic shit.

You’ve said before that you’d be happy if this band released six albums by next year, are you seriously aiming to release as much music as possible?
Dan- We’ve done two EPs and the single. We’ve got the album ready but before the album even goes off to be mastered we’re recording another two EPs to be released within six weeks of each other. Then a live album which we’re recording in London over the next two months but yeah by the end of the year I want another four releases. I don’t see why we can’t. A lot of bands don’t have a work ethic and by all accounts we don’t have a work ethic but we’ve talked a big game.

So when will the album be released and what can we expect musically?
Craig- September, if not early October but yeah it’s in the bag.
Dan- It’s got a lot of different styles in it that we’ve tried to compile seamlessly, I don’t know whether it’s worked. But we always planned for it to sort of spawn from straight fast punk numbers to really down tempo sludge numbers but then also trying to merge the two seamlessly. I didn’t want it to sound like ‘Oh right, now they’re doing a punk song, now they’re doing a hardcore song...’. I wanted it all to move together quite well and the album’s going to be quite long, it will be a good 40-50 minutes long we hope.
Craig-We’re quite conscience of trying to make a record that works as a record rather than just 12-15 songs.
Dan- We wrote it in two sessions. We’ve spent a month in the studio, which is hell like every single day. We’ve only had four days off in 30 days then we’re going back in for another three weeks. I want it to sound like it’s coming from the same session, like in a lot of albums you can hear when they’ve worked with different producers or they’ve gone to different studios. I don’t want that to happen.

After the song ‘Rat Trap’ which slates Pete Townshend and Paul Weller, I’ve got to ask...why do you hate mods so much?
Dan- It’s not necessarily that I hate mods, it’s that I hate what mods have become in this day and age. It’s like weekend estate agents with Paul Weller haircuts, suit off Carnaby Street. Everyone’s got the same records, everyone’s got the same ideas. I’ve been to ‘60s parties and in one there was a clock on the wall stuck at September 16th 1968 and everyone thought it was so kitsch.

So what do you hate about music today the most then?
Dan- It’s lost. There’s no music around at the moment that really cares what they do. People might interpret that that you have to be political and people think that means that you care about what you do. Being political in a band is just as much of a vehicle as dressing up to go in the NME. It’s a tool to make yourself something. There aren’t any bands just on their own doing something for no one else. I can’t think of a single band who does something just purely for their own taste.

You’ve said before that you don’t think bands are scary anymore and that they don’t really try hard, so are you trying to change that then?
Dan- I don’t think we’re trying to be scary, I mean I’m not trying to be scary.
Samir- We don’t need to try.
Dan- Bands that are scary, like Alice Cooper. There hasn’t been anyone that’s worried the public that much for a good 20 years. Shaun Ryder was the last person to really wind people up and I hate the Happy Mondays but I love Shaun Ryder so we need another Shaun Ryder.

You played the NME radar tour with bands that were nothing like you so how was it?
Dan- Chapel Club were really lovely, they’re nice boys. Quite good bands, not really something I’d put on but I definitely appreciated what they were doing far more than most other stuff. The NME tour was weird, no one was into it. Out of that entire tour probably about 20 people bought the record who came to see us and the rest of the people turned their noses up and scoffed.
Samir- We’ve done some shows recently in the same cities and we’ve been speaking to people and when we asked how they got to hear about us, they said they saw us on the NME tour and thought we were the only good thing on it, so it’s always worth it.
Dan- It was just fun to be on tour. It was the first time I’d ever been on tour, I mean we’d only been in the band for four months.

Did you expect airplay on BBC Radio One then?
Dan- Not at all. I mean when we wrote the single we sort of never wrote a song with the intention of it being a single with a hook but this is the first time I have tried to write a hook and I don’t know if it worked but we got played on the radio. I personally think it’s quite odd that we got played on the radio. My mum’s definitely shocked.

So what do you want this band to be remembered for then?
Samir- For being heartbreakers
Dan- Yeah, heartbreakers and love makers.
Craig- I think what we’re trying to achieve and what would be a success for us is to be a band that warrants some kind of conversation away from just the music we’re making. As long as we warrant some kind of reaction, whether it’s a positive or a negative reaction, that sort of means quite a lot to us.
Dan- 90% of bands we’ve played with have just been middle of the road. You can’t really fault it that much because it’s relatively alright but it’s not good enough to be exciting. Then theres a small demographic of bands who are really exciting but because they’re so exciting a lot of people are afraid of it. I think that’s the sort of category we might fall into.
Craig- I mean it doesn’t really matter what music you play as long as you’ve got some sort of integrity
behind it. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of bands who have got a great deal of integrity . They map out a plan on a bit of paper and just stick with that plan and it’s just crowd pleasing. We’re really lucky that we’ve stuck with what we wanted to do.
Dan- There’s a band called Sunsmasher from Glasgow who are amazing. It’s US hardcore crossed with real sort of sludge, mental drone and some of their songs are like nine minutes long.
So tell me about your next few shows and why people should be there
Samir-Well we’re supporting Morrissey in June.

Yeah, how did that come about?

Samir-I think he was having a bath surrounded by scented candles.
Dan- And vegan products.
Samir- And he instantly got on the phone and rang up our manager.
Craig- I dunno, it’s bizarre. He’s actually got a Flats tattoo I don’t know how that came about.
Dan- I think he saw a sign of me standing in front of a fox hunting parade.
Craig- Apparently just on his arm he has the Flats tattoo.

Are you Morrissey fans then?
Dan- I’m a massive massive Morrissey fan yeah, really taken aback when we found out. When I first met Craig he had a Smiths t-shirt, I had the same the Smiths t-shirt.

Having formed the band barely a year ago, aren’t you nervous?
Dan- I’m never nervous, I’m always cool calm and calculated.
Craig- Probably not as nervous as Morrissey to be honest.
Samir-Meeting us is going to be quite a big deal for him I think.
Dan- I think he’s going to be quite in awe.
Craig- He’ll probably try and cover up his tattoo because he’ll be embarrassed.



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