Architects - Holy Hell

After the loss of founding guitarist/keyboardist Adam Christianson following their 2016 release, the bittersweet yet uplifting All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us, it was uncertain what the future held for Architects without their intergral song-writer. But given the band’s ever life-affirming ethos, it’s no surprise the band responded to their tragedy by refusing to be struck down into despair, carrying on in honor of Christianson. The trail-blazers of the late-2000’s techy, melodic metalcore movement resume the anthemic, melodic brand of metalcore they helped carry into the 2010’s with unabashed conviction. And the band carry the torch in his honor well, coming through with a commemorative album that they can rest assured knowing he would certainly be proud of what his bandmates have made.

I was honestly not super floored the first time I listened to Holy Hell; it came off kind of predictable and safe for Architects. And the massive production value was honestly a bit distracting at first, with the untethered heavy guitars, punchy drums, orchestral string sections, and layered vocal harmonies all piling on top of each other in the mix. It seemed busy, but without much musical diversity to justify it. However, the album’s persevering attitude kept me coming back, and the more I listened to it, the less smooshed-together it sounded. And as I began to more clearly discern the contributions of the various layers in the mix, the more I was able to enjoy the positive battlecry this album set out to trumpet. The band clearly wanted to come through with the biggest sound they could envision, and justifiably so. And seeing as they didn’t seem to make any omitances as far as what sonic elements got layered onto their sound, the very dense mix actually came out pretty alright.

Lyrically, the album largely meditates on the fragility of life and the inevitable questioning of the justness of its being cut short with so much left to give. And the instrumentation holding up Sam Carter’s emotive raspy melodic screams of those lyrics fits the resilient tone of the album, which manages to pull out several heartstring-pulling melodies and powerful riffs and breakdowns. The elevating vocal melodies on songs like “Mortal After All” and “Royal Beggars” are most often the focus of the band’s steadfast optimism, but the crushing metalcore riffs and orchestral supplementation of songs like “Dying to Heal” and the title track give the band some cinematic firepower to back their torrent of conflicting emotions and steer them toward a still-bright future.

Holy Hell is, in some ways, Architects as they’ve always been, but it’s also the group at their most challenged, and therefore urgent, and they do come through with an honest, vibrant tribute to their fallen comrade that truly shows them truly seeking to pull the band through their tragic circumstance as Christianson would have wanted. It is perhaps their most triumphant record to date, oddly, as the band emphatically triumph over death itself.