This show was one of the main returns after the loss of the their founding guitarist, Tom Searle's, death following the release of their 2016 album "All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us".

This concert is the one that got me into the band as I'd never seen anyone blend melody with extremely technical music and still manage to achieve very strong emotions. The setlist of this show is a prime example of this unique musical blend of technicality and emotion, and this is why I will be discussing their levels of technicality over the years up to this concert.

Around this era the band did numerous interviews in which they spoke about how they felt and their thoughts during this performance and around this time.

Frontman Sam Carter stated:

^₃ “But what do you do? You have to address it, you have to say something”

This ties into the bands approach to dealing with the grief, they didn't hide it or avoid talking about it. During their performance in Alexandra Palace Dan Searle, Tom's brother, gave a speech in which he told the audience what happened and he said how proud Tom would be of them playing to 10,000 people in one of their biggest shows at that point.

As a guitar player myself I can confirm that the song is very difficult to play, as are many of their songs, this is due to the varying degree of rhythms, as well as time signature changes throughout.

During the pre-chorus of the song it rapidy jumps between 7/4 and 6/4 time which creates a strange flow the makes it difficult to know exactly what the song it doing but it resolves well into the chorus.

One review by The guardian describes:

^₂ "Down tuned guitar, ferocious percussion and singer Sam Carter growling like a man who gargles broken glass"

This song is also very hard to play on a technical level due to the emotions involved with it. It is often seen as the highlight of this performance, not only due to how well it was played technically, but the emotions that are visibile on each band member during the performance.

The lyrics of the song are clearly quite pessimistic and bitter as it was written by guitarist Tom Searle during his 3 year battle with cancer. In it he ^₁ "expresses his loss of faith and deep sense of hopelessness. The artist had lost his faith in God as he knew he wouldn’t eventually make it".

Lyrics like "God knows I've lost all my faith" and "Hope is a prison" perfectly encapsulate Tom's emotions at the time of writing.

This website is known for its accurate knowledge if lyrics, as well as interpretations of what they mean.

2. Gittens, Ian. (2018) Architects review – raging crusaders raise the roof with a tearful tribute. The Guardian.

   https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/feb/05/architects-review-alexandra-palace

3. Aroesti, Rachel. (2018) Architects: the British rock stars confronting the hell of grief. The Guardian.

   https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/14/architects-band-interview-dan-searle-tom-searle-cancer-new-album-holy-hell

4. Davis-Powell, Adam. (2023) Interview: Dan Searle from Architects. Something You Said.

   https://somethingyousaid.com/2023/02/14/interview-dan-searle-from-architects/

They are a band that has changed sound quite a lot throughout their career, and this leads to a lot of backlash from fans of their older style that would have quite an impact on most other bands, however they knew that to create the best possible music they would need to do what they want, not what other expected.

In an interview with "Something You Said" the drummer, Dan Searle, said:

^₄"Making this album was a chance for us to work on something lighter, and it was definitely a healthy change for me personally"

This clearly points towards their sound change being a change that they needed to make for the band to continue. This shows an aspect of their technicality in that they can do what they need to do to make sure the final product is as good as possible, many bands falter whenever they try to put the expectations of the fans first and it often makes the music suffer.

Being one of their bigger songs it's suprising that it's one of their most difficult songs to play as their other big songs tend to be simpler in technicality.

This song was the first single off their 2018 album "Holy Hell" and was also performed at the Alexandra Palace concert previously mentioned. This song can be seen as a continuation of the previous sound, however this is when they took a more melodic approach to their overall sound, whilst keeping the songs hard to play.

What makes this song difficult is the constant change in style throughout, it moves between fast paced intricate sections and clean, slower sections. While being hard to play on both guitar and drums, it's vocals and bass where this song is espcially hard. The bass may only follow what the guitars are doing but due to the larger size of a bass these technical runs are very difficult to achieve cleanly.

However, vocals are without a doubt the hardest part of this song, they rapid movement between screaming and singing is difficult enough to do for any singer, but Sam Carter's unique style of screaming requires a lot more effort and though to do safely and correctly. Therefore, this song can pose a challenge to anyone singing it and it can be very easy to strain your voice in the process.

This live performance of this song perfectly demonstrates their technicality as a band, everything is being played clearly and accurately which makes it easy to see how intricate the song really is. This was an era of the band when they played to smaller crowds, however, that didn't stop them from an amazing performance. What I like most about it is the more intimate nature of this show which makes it easier to see what the band are playing and how hard it is.

Similarly to the song "Gone with the wind", this songs time signature is what creates one of the hardest problems when performing it. The main riff of the song is in 6/4, which is already hard enough to play in, but the riff always feels like it cuts off slighly too early, intentionally. This is what makes it so hard to play as it's so difficult to lock into a particular rhythm when playing as it doesn't follow any rhythmic conventions that would give comfort when playing any other song in an odd time signature.

This oddness continues into the bridge and breakdown of the song, the rhythm in this section is very hard to keep track of and requires multiple listens to really understand it. That is something that can be said for a lot of their music, at first it all doesn't make sense but once you break it down you start to understand it better.

Firstly, the time signatures they use make their songs sound the way they do, as seen in the songs "Gone with the wind" and "C.A.N.C.E.R", they use odd time signatures to great effect to make their unique sound in modern metalcore.

Also, their riffs are very intricate and hard to play as they tend to move around the guitar neck a lot, this is not only hard for new players, but even experienced guitar players struggle with their songs.

Finally, complex rhythms. Even in standard time, 4/4, their songs feature very unusual rhythms that are hard to interperet on first listen.