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4
CONCERT
Architects
Oslo Spectrum
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They weren’t necessarily born on the sunny side, the guys at British Architects. But when the “Sunny” Solskjær jersey comes on for the encores and the concert culminates with the monster hit “Animals”, the British metal architects show class on the biggest Oslo stage they’ve been on so far in their career.
The concert with Architects was originally supposed to be at Sentrum Stage. But after nearly two decades on the inner metal scene, something has happened to the gang, who are now in their mid-thirties. In a short time, they have gone from being a medium-sized metalcore band with a steadfast fanbase, to being lifted up in stadium format in the same way as equal groups they have shared the stage and fans with, above all Bring Me The Horizon. In other words, a short distance away from the punk and hardcore scene they ran from, but still leaden and uncompromising. Instead of Sentrum Scene, the influx of Norwegian fans made it a “half” Spektrum with somewhere around five to six thousand audiences. There is no doubt that the band has mastered this format, even on a night with initial difficulties.
– How many people were in the hall the last time we played a headliner concert in Oslo?
Vocalist Sam Carter blurts out the question about halfway through the hour-and-a-half-long set. 600 is the answer he gives himself and us, and then we may be back in the difficult year of 2016 and on the Vulkan Stage, just a couple of months after Tom Searle, the band’s main songwriter, co-founder and twin brother of drummer Dan Searle, died of cancer .
Eight years later, there are still a couple of songs during a concert that Carter says are difficult to pull off. He then also begins “Doomsday” by saying that the loss of Tom, by family, was alleviated by the band’s other family, which are the fans. If it hadn’t been for them, there would be no Architects today. This evening in Spektrum they topped the bill with Spiritbox and Loathe as support.
When someone in the audience reminds Carter that they actually played at Tons of Rock in Oslo last summer, the vocalist replies quite correctly that it was not a headliner concert, although he wishes it could have been. He need not worry. They will get there one day. And to a full Oslo Spektrum.
The Brighton group was formed by the Searle brothers in 2004. Carter joined in 2007, making his stage debut with the band on the day he turned eighteen. Bassist Alex Dean had started a few months before. After Tom Searle dropped out of the band and time, both Adam Christianson and Josh Middleton came in. The latter on first guitar left the band last year, and was replaced by Martyn Edwards, originally the band’s guitar technician, who now excels with riffs in an otherwise convincing wall of hardcore sound, lightning-quick turns and a comp so heavy that the hall shakes. With additional hired tour reinforcement, there are now six on stage.
The stage rig they provided in Spektrum would, by the way, fill the entire Sentrum Stage in itself, a 3-storey illuminated podium peppered with video cannons, with the drummer on the second ledge and the vocalist right up on the top. This is not unlike the stage mentioned Bring Me The Horizon has toured with in recent years. There are, moreover, several similarities in the two bands’ careers, but Architects at least live has a firmer grounding in the post-punk and hardcore genres from which they sprang.
Metalcore, as Architects plays it, is still pure pop for the metal masses, lead-heavy, hard-hitting and melodically whipping towards choruses that call for a sing-along. Sam Carter sometimes needed the last thing this evening in Oslo. The winter cold on the European tour took a toll on his voice, and he also admitted that he was not quite up to the situation, even though he sang into his usual strong and high pitch and delivered solidly in dark and atmospheric signature songs such as “Deathwish”, ” Gravedigger” and not least “Dead Butterflies” while the confetti sprinkled from the ceiling. The sound was mushy at the start, as during the opening song “Seeing Red” – one of the band’s fastest and hardest songs. But just seven weeks after its release, it still shows how good songwriters Sam Carter and Dan Sears have become. The sound picked up in parallel with the energy both on stage and in the hall, and Carter ran a full marathon this evening, getting the audience with him to such an extent that in the end it boiled off crowd surfers in front of the small stage “catwalk”.
Carter’s typical “growler” outbursts, the ones that characterize light and dark in this band, were another matter, but Architects are blessed with fans who can all tune in and out. They sing along and enthusiastically join in the courtship of the audience from the stage. They also don’t allow themselves to be asked twice if they are asked to sing outside of their schedule. As in the Solskjær song after Carter has paid tribute to the Norwegian Manchester United legend, and finally the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army”. Or when the weight of the set turns towards the 2021 album “For Those That Wish to Exist”. From here they also deliver big versions of “Black Lungs” and “Meteor”, which emphasize that six men on stage create more life than four.
The ending is self-explanatory. Among the last songs is “When We Were Young”, a song that Carter delivers with an fervor that suggests that the lyrics about flying too close to the sun because everything in the world is clear to you, of course ends with burns. And then “Animals”, also the one from “For Those That Wish to Exist”, and another song about discouragement and resignation, but which has become the band’s key to a success they have worked hard and long to achieve.
They are working hard this evening in Oslo Spektrum too, and not just because Carter is struggling with his voice. They lack a few more songs of the same caliber as “Animals”, which would have given a concert like this more dynamism along the way. But when the last audience plane has landed and the man with the number 20 on his back has left the stage, the journey is still solid.