Architects arrived to raise hell in Brighton on Monday night as awesome new opus Lost Forever // Lost Together hit the shelves. Here’s what went down…
There’s loads of great things about the seaside. Walks along the promenade, fish and chips, sticks of rock and end of the pier humour to name but a few. Well, tonight in Brighton you can add the album launch of one of the best bands in Britain to the list of great reasons to be on the coast. Architects are back on their home patch and everybody in this tiny, packed out venue is cruising for a bruising.
Before we get to them though we have a stacked support bill of some of the hottest properties in young, mosh-ready music to whet our appetites. There is little doubt that Landscapes are towards the front of the ever-strong UK hardcore pack right now while Aussie experimentalists Northlane bring a more cerebral approach to proceedings. The latter are hampered by a sparse mix that doesn’t serve their complexities well, but you get the sense there is much, much more to come. They’re followed by Stray From The Path who up the energy level considerably – their bouncing RATM meets New York Hardcore hybrid a dynamite combination in what is now a blisteringly hot sweatbox.
Our dripping brows are a mere soupçon of what is to come though as Architects walk on stage and are greeted with near religious rapture as the returning heroes that they are. Opening with Gravedigger, the choicest of choice cuts from their brilliant new record Lost Forever // Lost Together, they sound like a runaway freight train from note one. A swirling maelstrom of triumphant force delivered through the venomous conduit of Sam Carter’s steel lined throat. That’s Sam Carter, one of the most underrated front men in the UK. He is everything you could dream of tonight; vicious, sincere, glowingly grateful between songs and in possession of a roar that is the match of anybody, anywhere. With a setlist that unsurprisingly focusses on Architects’ last two records it is a testament to the arsenal of songs this band have accumulated in the last few years that they only play a couple of tracks from their seminal Hollow Crown and we are still happy as pigs in shit.
An uproarious closing rendition of These Colours Don’t Run with its ‘YOU FUCKING PIGS’ war cry is just the cherry on a quite astonishing cake – this is an hour of solid gold. Six albums into their career and Architects remain one of the most vital bands of their sort in the UK. Not only is their musical output supreme, but their ethic, ethos and spirit (which drips from every one of their pores tonight) is something to admire and aspire to. If they keep doing what they did here tonight, we will be talking about Architects for many, many more years to come.
Review by Tom Doyle
Architects Brighton Haunt Setlist
Gravedigger
C.A.N.C.E.R
Alpha Omega
Even If You Win, You’re Still a Rat
Day in Day Out
Naysayer
Daybreak
Follow the Water
Colony Collapse
Black Blood
Devil’s Island
Early Grave
Broken Cross
Encore:
Red Hypergiant
These Colours Don’t Run
_Lost Forever // Lost Together _is out now via Epitaph.
