Depending on what time zone you live in, British metalcore band Architects‘ tenth studio album “The Classic Symptoms Of A Broken Spirit” may already be in your hands. That effort is scheduled for a release tomorrow, October 21st and as with it’s predecessor, has generated some divisive reactions to its advance singles and the sonic leaps they represent.
Speaking recently with New Noise Magazine, the band’s vocalist Sam Carter opened up on the dangers that social media and the like can play on creativity and if his band themselves play into the pressure from the internet.
“I think it doesn’t shape our band, in terms of how people would react to something doesn’t shape what we do going forward, or looking back, or going like, oh, people want this, or people want that. I think it’s always painful when people are so needlessly aggressive towards you, and angry with you almost, for you releasing something that essentially they get to listen to for free, which is wild to me to complain when something’s just put in front of you. I think there’s plenty of bands and songs—People put out stuff that I don’t like or don’t listen to. And I just choose not to listen to it. I’m just like, OK, that’s it.
People nowadays are so entitled. It’s like everybody that has Instagram or Twitter is a music journalist all of a sudden. I think it’s really interesting. Likewise with positive comments and stuff as well, for me, I’m just like, whatever. I try not to read any of them. People need to be careful because you don’t want younger bands to be too affected and shaped by the things that people are saying, because it may stop them from creating something amazing. I think people’s best work is when they go out of their comfort zone and do something that they’re happy with.
And I think also people are very quick to forget that we are still a heavy band. We are still in situations where we’re representing heavy music to a large audience. And we’re always shouting out bands that are a lot more aggressive and heavy than us, and championing the scene really. We’re trying to do good for it. At the same time, we’re not the same five people—literally Josh [Middleton] wasn’t in the band until two, three records ago.
And at the end of the day, we were very fortunate to have Tom [Searle] in our band who was the best musician at writing heavy music. He was the best at writing those insane, Architects-type riffs that everybody rips off now. So we can’t in good faith go back and rip off Tom’s riffs because that would just be insane. So we are really happy with where we’re at as musicians and what we create with the five of us now.
And Josh has brought so much brilliant stuff to the band. It doesn’t really bother me in the sense of where I would take the band or what we would do with the band, but in terms of feeling quite sad about the way people are and the way people talk to each other, it bums me out in that sense because I just worry for the younger artists, seeing that.
When I was a kid, if I saw bands getting absolutely smashed for just putting out music, I’d be like, uh, I don’t understand. Like, what are we gonna do? I’m just trying to enjoy music. So yeah, it’s just part and parcel of it, but it’s younger bands that I worry for.
I think in terms of where we are, we have, like, 15 years under our belt where we’re experienced enough to just trust our gut after this amount of time. But you look back at bands like—I always use The Beatles as an example. If social media was around, and people were as aggressive and angry as they are now, would Sgt. Pepper’s exist?
Would they have taken the big jumps that they took in the middle of their records? You’ve got to be careful that these standards that the internet sets people to don’t destroy that creative venture of trying stuff out because you love it. Not because you think it’ll sell well.”
