UK metalcore group Architects sadly lost their guitarist Tom Searle in 2016 to cancer. The group carried on and naturally evolved their sound over time in different directions. To frontman Sam Carter and his bandmates, it was natural and necessary as artists. But the reaction by some fans—even evoking Searle's memory in vain—was often too much for Carter to rationalize, as he described in a new interview on The Punk Rock MBA podcast.
"I think it's one of those things… I think when you're actually creating, you just have to block it all out" Carter began by saying. "You have to think like, 'Okay, well, this is what's going to happen, we're going to do this because this is where we feel like the song should go, this is where we feel like the album should go' and you write to that and you write to that moment.
Carter continued, noting that "After a while, you sort of feel like if you're just going in and you're gonna just do Holy Hell part two, it feels a little bit like you're doing a disservice to your friend Tom, to go off… just ripping off his songs when he's not here to write [them].
"Josh and Dan are our main songwriters now and us three work so hard to carry on pushing this band in new directions… And I totally respect everyone's right to not like it. I just don't respect it when people are personal in that sort of attacks towards you, like you've done something wrong to them by creating something. The main thing to me on this album cycle that's just been staggering is just the amount of people that have brought up Tom and say what his opinions would be of our music."
It's something that clearly baffles and troubles the Architects frontman. "It's really crazy…. [T]hat's the side of things that is just so painful, because that's the most horrific moment in my entire life. And somebody, because they don't like something that I've created, or we've created together, they feel like they can bring that up to hurt me because they don't like a song.
"I don't know about you… But there's a lot of bands that release music where I go like, 'Ah, I don't know if I get this yet.' But I'm certainly not going to go and tweet them and say like, 'By the way, your member that died would fucking hate this.' It's a whole level of insanity."
We agree completely, because seriously – what kind of monster uses someone's dead family member and bandmate to criticize someone's music? That's going entirely too far and then some. Or I guess to put it even simpler, it's super fucked up.
