Live: Every Time I Die & Architects

The Ritz

10 March

8/10

Every Time I Die may have just set the record for most high-fives ever given at a show. The Metalcore five-piece from Buffalo, New York, are veterans in the scene and it’s easy to see why they’ve been able to stick around for so long: they kick ass. Hard. They were relentless as they powered through the best of their huge discography, playing tracks from 2003’s Hot Damn! through to 2014’s From Parts Unknown, pausing only to call for bigger circle pits or to reach out to the waves of fans who burst over the barricades. The highlight of the set was definitely ‘We’rewolf’; a song that perfectly encompasses the spirit of the band; going absolutely insane and having a fucking great time doing it. ETID are masters of the stage and they clearly know it, enjoying themselves as much as the crowd and performing with so much charisma and savagery that it was easy to forget that they weren’t the last act of the night. If you like their studio stuff, go see them live; they are an entirely different beast on stage.

The electronic intro of ‘Broken Cross’ signalled that the main act had arrived, sending the crowd into fervour with a monstrous scream of “God only knows why we were born to burn” and huge blasts of compressed air. If you like breakdowns then Architects are the band for you. The Brighton quintet have managed to avoid the trap that a lot of metalcore bands fall where similar sounding songs blend into an indistinguishable chugfest. Instead, they unleash a barrage of aggressive and technical rhythms interspersed throughout the genre-defining thrashing. It also helps that their techies did a fantastic job; the quality of their live sound holds up well to that of their albums.

Sam Carter is, quite frankly, an incredible frontman. His presence was undeniable as he stomped and bounced around the stage while delivering consistently powerful vocals, nailing his trademark “BLEGH,” all without forgetting to say a few words about the Sea Shepherds; a marine conservation charity that he represents.

Architects definitely did not disappoint, dropping into the bouncy ‘The Devil Is Near’ and then following soon after with fan-favourite ‘Naysayer’, also bringing on Counterparts’ vocalist Brendan Murphy who absolutely killed ‘Early Graves’. While a lot of the set was focused on tracks from 2014’s Lost Forever // Lost Together, Architects made sure to include some older material such as the technical riffs of ‘Alpha Omega’ and the politically charged ‘Devil’s Island’. They finished off with ‘These Colours Don’t Run’, encouraging people to break their necks head-banging to the brutal breakdown, before returning to stage to finish the job off properly with the immense ‘Gravedigger’, triggering a chorus of “you are the reason we are bitter and then some” to lead into the last pit of the night.

Architects stand out from the increasingly homogenous metalcore scene, both live and in the studio, and really put their all into an incredible show. Unfortunately it’s hard to outperform Every Time I Die, who stole the show with their raw energy and sheer ferocity. However, if you’re a fan of the genre I would definitely recommend Architects as they are easily one of the best in the scene right now.