Everyone's a critic! But there are some critiques that go a little too far, and Architects frontman Sam Carter is calling out one particular mode of criticism he feels has crossed a line into being something more hurtful and personal.
Speaking to NME, Carter has hit out at those who have used guitarist Tom Searle's death as a way to denigrate what they are doing musically. “You put a song out and people will say, ‘Tom’s rolling in his grave. Tom would be fucking sick if he heard this. Tom would fucking hate what you’re doing. You’re pissing on Tom’s legacy,’” says Carter, commenting on some of the messages he's received. “Because you don’t like a song you think it’s OK to bring up the most traumatizing moment of my entire life; a thing that I’m still in therapy for, a thing that I think about every single day. I’ve cried a lot over it and hurt a lot over it, because I just can’t believe how low people can be.”
The singer notes the change in tone of the comments toward the band, noting the supportive environment initially after Searle's death. “Everybody wanted to be proud of us for carrying on. People forget very quickly. They forgot that we are just humans.”
As for the decision to pursue something a little lighter in tone musically after Searle's death cast a more serious shadow on their previous release, the vocalist says, “I think it was important for it not to become a genre, almost like grief-core or something. It’s really hard to be on tour and talking about that every night, and [it] coming from a place of complete honesty. [But] Tom wouldn’t want us to be sat in pain constantly and bringing up traumatic experiences every night.”
During a recent chat with Loudwire Nights, Carter further elaborated on the decision to make the tonal change. "It was around "Animals" coming out and playing shows around For Those That Wish to Exist. I think the thing with it was [we were] discussing Tom constantly. It's not an easy thing to do 24/7 and to open your trauma up to everybody for that amount of time. It became quite tiring and really just sad," he told host Toni Gonzalez.
"I think every time we would go onstage, I would tell a story about Tom, but I couldn't just tell the same story. I wouldn't want to do that, because I didn't want it to sound like I was reading a script. So, every night we were talking about Tom I'd be going into the to these traumatic memories and sometimes they're really fond memories and sometimes they were really hard memories," he continued. "But I would be telling the truth. It became a point where I spoke with Dan [Searle, drummer], and Dan had obviously seen that how much it was getting to me discussing this stuff onstage and he was like, 'You don't have to open up as much as you are if you don't want to,' and was like 'If you need to just not say as much and to get through the show and to have a good time and to be grateful that you're here, then you should do that.'"
Carter concluded, "So, yeah, when it came into the studio and to live, as a sailor off the back of For Those That Wish to Exist, it was more like, let's just really enjoy this moment that we have. Let's do what Tom would want us to do, which was to not be sat around being sad and miserable. He would want us to go and live our lives to the fullest and to enjoy every moment, and I think that's what we want."
The band's new album, The Classic Symptoms of a Broken Spirit, is out now.
