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Review: 'Archives'
'Decay'   


-  Genre: 'Heavy Metal' -  Release Date: '10th December 2021'

Our Rating:
Norther Irish quintet Archives came together just last year, and have wasted no time in composing and recording – and releasing – their debut album.

The points of reference listed in their bio is standard to the point of checklist-tedious for a band setting out to make music that’s at once heavy and melodic – Fightstar, Killswitch Engage, Architects, and the title is fitting with the common thematic tropes. The band’s name is something of a contract, carrying connotations of enduring records and documents of the past, something altogether more studious, academic even, than the kind of emotional, cathartic intent of the material.

Opener ‘Eulogy’ brings some really hefty growl, not just vocally, but in the bass department and with the chunky, thick rhythm guitar sound. The mix is interesting and refreshing, as the vocals are kept relatively low in the mix, and Adam Holland’s lead is the guttural snarl, augmented by guitarist Stewart Ferguson’s clean vocals which are sometimes brought to the fore in a well-balanced interplay.

The melodies, then, aren’t sappy, emo effort, and instead they break the wall of blastbeat-driven abrasion with soaring guitar moments that echo an evocative ache, implied rather than rendered explicitly with some whiney ‘tuneful’ singing. Taking their inspiration from personal struggles and assembled during lockdown, dedicate the album ‘to anyone who is going through their own battles with mental health’. In doing so, they capture the peaks and troughs, the swings, the anguish.

The title track is a standout, with a slow-building intro that explodes into Armageddon, and the contrasting textures are intelligent and articulate; the chorus-coated lead guitar work glides nicely and spins delicate webs around the dirty, fat lumps of distortion-sodden noise. Elsewhere, lead single ‘Mindfields’ is a full-throttle, all-out metal rager with some rapidfire bass drum pedal action packing much of the power.

There’s a consistency across the album which indicates a band with a strong sense of identity and a clear focus, and they sustain the intensity throughout, really driving hard on the sub-three-minute ‘Parmaviolence’. It all adds up to a strong debut, and if they can come close to replicating it when they finally do get to take it to a live setting, they should soon establish themselves with quite a fanbase.

  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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