Architects
The Here And Now

Often the title of an album is more than just a catchy phrase; it frequently hides secondary meanings that only listening to the album can reveal (and no, not those trivialities from bands that name the album after themselves just to say in interviews that it's their most personal work, how banal, for crying out loud). The "here and now" of Architects indicates the current state of evolution of a band for which the boundaries of metalcore were becoming tighter than expected.

The onset of the first single "Day In, Day Out" gave me some doubts. "No, but is this really them?" The riff decidedly flirts more with rock than metal, Sam Carter sings clean for more than half of the song, the only thing remaining from their past is Dan Searle's spectacular drum work, giving each track his personal touch with consistently interesting parts. One might think they'd return to their old style, but the rest of the album follows the same coordinates, showing a greater inclination towards more hardcore than metal sounds (the likely next single "Learn To Live", that phenomenal track "Btn", "The Blues") where Carter never limits himself to just screaming but always leaves space for clean singing, proving to be excellent in that aspect too. However, the real surprise lies in the album's slower tracks ("An Open Letter To Myself", "Heartburn") where guitars, never so melodic, incorporate electronic elements to enrich the base. In the second half, in the faster tracks, they return to sounds closer to the old (old...damn, they're turning 24) Architects, also thanks to a couple of collaborations with Andrew Neufeld of Comeback Kid on "Stay Young Forever", perhaps the song most musically reminiscent of the band's past, and Greg Puciato of Dillinger Escape Plan on the concluding and structurally chaotic "Year In, Year Out/Up And Away", which at least partially bring the Brighton group back to the powerful old sound of their previous "Hollow Crown". The production and mixing by Steve Evetts (longtime producer for Dillinger Escape Plan, who has also worked with the Cure) doesn't lose an ounce of power in the album, which in this sense sounds practically identical to the previous one, which is certainly not a bad thing, quite the contrary.

The maturity achieved by these 5 young men from Brighton at such a young age is astonishing, their awareness of their abilities and the direction for their music is unmatched in the rest of the scene (any reference to fellow citizens Bring Me The Horizon is very much intended), and never mind if there's another "Follow The Water" missing, you can't expect a masterpiece track on every album, and maybe here there won't be even one, but in return, this "The Here And Now" is full of excellent tracks. The future of the English alternative metal scene is "here and now", and Architects will be its undisputed protagonists in the years to come.