Many bands might not be so keen to rip it up and start again, especially when they’re on to a good thing. Finding yourself with a #1 album and selling out arenas is enough for some to repeat a winning formula. Architects however, are that shark that dies if it stops swimming. “It was definitely validating and felt really cool for like a day,” recalls drummer, producer and songwriter Dan Searle of hitting the top spot with ‘For Those That Wish To Exist’. “For a lot of the bucket list things you reach in any career, there’s a momentary gratification then you’re like, ‘What next?’ You just move on. By the time the album came out, my head was already in the mindset of ‘Broken Spirit’. That was where I was at.”
 
Searle notes how it was their albums ‘Lost Forever/Lost Together’, ‘All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us’, and ‘Holy Hell’ that really “cemented what the band was about” and “took them to a new level” as a rock powerhouse and leaders of the UK’s metalcore scene – making it all the more “daunting” to reinvent themselves on the records that would follow. “Especially after we re-recorded ‘Wish To Exist’  at Abbey Road with an orchestra, I felt that we had to shelve the strings and all that stuff,” he says. “I wanted to make this album with a different aesthetic. We were enjoying working with the synths and doing stuff that we hadn't done before.”
 
As a band who never stop writing, the kernels of the songs that make up ‘The Classic Symptoms Of A Broken Spirit’ were already in progress before the ink had time to dry on the artwork of their last record. Architects were on a creative roll, and the record was born of that creative freedom. Produced by Dan Searle and Josh Middleton, with additional production from Sam Carter at Decon’s Middle Farm Studios and their own Brighton Electric Studios before being mixed by Zakk Cervini, the band were buoyed by finally being back in a room together after their last album was made mostly remotely due to COVID restrictions. The result was something altogether more “free, playful and spontaneous,” Searle explains. 
 
For Carter, the most revealing track is the album’s simmering center-piece ‘Burn Down My House’. Taking in the band’s post-rock influences, it builds a cinematic moodscape as the frontman warns: “I swear I’m OK, just hear the words I don’t say”. 
 
“A lot of us have struggled with mental health,” he says. “I had been on antidepressants for a long time. The year we started making the record, I had just come off them. I know that Dan and I are both still in counseling and therapy. That song is so important because it epitomizes how you can feel when you’re just completely shot and fed up. There are a lot of times where I didn’t know that I was in that spiral or struggling. It’s a song that asks, ‘Do you have that friend that you’re concerned about’?” 
 
It’s a discussion that Carter has made the effort to have on stage, especially through his own darkness following the passing of guitarist and principal songwriter Tom Searle – a founding member and Dan’s brother – who died of cancer in 2016. Since then, the loss of their close friend has coloured much of their work. Now, they can exercise their demons and reach out to their fans  in a different light on ‘The Classic Symptoms Of A Broken Spirit’. “This one is more of a party,” concludes Carter. “We’ve got a good atmosphere and we’re celebrating Tom rather than being too downbeat. He’ll always be there as part of the band, but this one is more exciting. One of my friends recently told me after a show, ‘You weren’t quite there yet, but now you’re having fun and in the moment’. You never forget what happened, but you learn from it.” 
 
Comparing the band to a Premiere League footballer who needs to go back into training after each season’s victory, Carter is confident that their Cantona years of looking back on their glory days are a long way off for now, as they’re still living through them – but now with a mind to let the good times roll. Nothing can go wrong if you’re doing what feels right. As Carter growls on the industrial stomp of the arena-ready album gem ‘Tear Gas: “Anything is possible – wake up the unstoppable”.