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.
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