'Can we ready ourselves for the outrage?' Sam Carter warned us when Architects released Whiplash last year. The lad is raging. You can sense it even as opener Elegy floats into existence via fluttering EDM. You can feel it just under one minute later as the track explodes into life, courtesy of a scything melodeath riff and a paint-stripping scream, quickly followed by a nasty, guttural roar that’s comfortably more visceral and, well, heavy than anything on 2022’s The Classic Symptoms Of A Broken Spirit. That was a great record – one where Architects distilled the ambitious experimentation of For Those That Wish To Exist into a taut, hook-laden set of arena-ready anthems – but The Sky, The Earth & All Between is a whole different animal.
Where much of the band’s recent output has traded in heartbreak, despair and existential soul-searching, The Sky..., for the most part, finds Brighton’s finest simply seething. Yes, there are still big choruses and catchy hooks abound – Elegy’s ‘Again, again, again’ refrain will stick in your head for days – but there’s a sense of raging urgency that permeates almost every nook and cranny of the album’s 42-minute runtime.
