Architects - Hollow Crown

I was introduced to the Architects when they were the first band to play when I saw Bring me the Horizon in September of 2009. Now just to let you know, I love everything BMTH released prior to their 2010 disaster. But Bring me the Horizon isn’t what I’m here to tell you about; that’s for another time. The Architects came on with Early Grave and the whole crowd started going absolutely nuts with headbanging and jumping. The next day I looked them up and got this album and it was awesome. After a couple of months I listened to their other albums; and now I’m back to only having this album. If you don’t see what I’m getting at, I’m saying that their other albums SUCK! Because of this, Hollow Crown is one of the biggest flukes in the history of metal.

Before I jump into talking about the album, I would like to say that Architects and BMTH have been brothers since the beginning (they’ve both been around for about the same amount of time, BMTH still puts the Architects as an opening act on almost every one of their tours). They both have influenced each other’s music in some sort of way; the biggest influence is what I will talk about next.

The biggest reason why so many people despise Bring me the Horizon is because Oliver Sykes started doing that retarded-sounding yell. Now it’s gotten to the point to where you rarely hear him scream or growl (unless of course they are playing an older song live). You know where I think Oliver got that idea from? Listen to this album, and then listen to the other Architects albums. Although that vocal style sounds better in this album because the music style differs from that off BMTH’s albums, it still gets irritating after a while of listening to it.

The biggest problem that I have with this band is the same problem that I have with Meshuggah; and that is that the album seems like a constant breakdown. Fortunately, there are some sped up parts to get the pit going and there are some more melodic parts backed by slightly better than average singing. But it just seems like there is a lack of creativity (which is why this is a fluke, because they had no creativity in any of their other records).

For those of you that love to headbang, this is going to be a great album for you. You’ll turn on the first song and say “Oh Hellyeah!!” The first track is filled with thick and heavy breakdowns with enough bass to make a dubstep fan happy and even has some melodic parts. The beginning of the next song sounds almost exactly like Early Grave, but I mean, there’s nothing wrong with doing the same thing more than once; it’s just when you do the same thing too many times when there’s an obvious lack of creativity and commitment. Dethroned is more of a moshing song that has extreme drops with tons of meaty bass within the kick drums; definitely something that puts a smile on my face. But after that, the albums gradually gets more and more dull.

The sound quality of this record is astonishing compared to the albums previous to it. The guitar distortion has tons of treble and an inconceivable amount of bass, but with very little mid-range; therefore creating a unique sound perfect for the metalcore genre. When you hear this album, instead of hearing a bunch of musicians, you hear a band; which is EXACTLY what I want to hear. But it seems that now they’ve gone back to mediocrity; which is why this album is a fluke. I still listen to this album and enjoy it, but it’s the only good album that this band has put out so far. I would give this record 13/20.