Albums•November 29, 2011•18,721 views

Architect All Is Not Lost

01. The Awakening 02. Sic Semper Tyrannis 03. 11 04. Trepanning For Oil 05. 13 06. Hell Of The Upsidedown Sinners 07. The End Of It 08. Collapse Of The War Engine 09. 33 10. Broke Dick Dog 11. The Giving Tree

2007 Black Market Activities

Our score 9

by Nick

2/6/2007

Attention fans of aggressive music: Architect's debut full-length, All Is Not Lost, is your holy grail. It's just that simple. Spawned from the ashes of Found Dead Hanging, Architect is clearly the better band. Combining the genre-bending of Coalesce and the dark and gritty sound of Engineer with the intensity of Premonitions of War, Architect provides a half hour of the most powerful and crushing metallic hardcore to hit the heavy music scene in recent times. The album opens with a 45 second long ambient noise intro that quickly escalates as the opening riff explodes. There isn't a single aspect of All Is Not Lost that fails to live up to the overall ferociousness of the disc. Whether it's the pummeling drumming, the angular guitars, or the dirty, driving bass, all of the instrumentation on this disc is, for lack of a better way to truly describe it, simply really fucking heavy. Even the vocal performance is clearly on a completely different echelon of aggression when compared to current bands in the hardcore and metal scenes. If the forceful riffs and blistering pace of some of the opening tracks don't manage to throttle the listener, surely the commanding screams of "You are not going to make it" at the end of "Broke Dick Dog" will. Even those who have been desensitized to the true appeal of heavy music after years of listening to hardcore and metal will find themselves appreciating the hell-bent nature of All Is Not Lost. In addition to excelling in the metallic hardcore arena, Architect continued to musically push themselves to round out All Is Not Lost into a complete and cohesive album. Their use of ambient noise in the trio of tracks appropriately named for their length in seconds ("11, "13," and "33") allows the disc to possess excellent flow, as the listener is provided with eerie atmospherics and a brief chance to catch one's breath before the next crushing track begins. The feedback placed directly in the middle of "The End of It" is also an excellent choice as it has the interesting effect of supplying the 90 second long track with an intense climax that rivals that of bands with longer, more developed song structure. The carefully placed noise throughout the album resembles a more controlled dosage of that found on Old Man Gloom albums as it is just enough to set the tone of the album, but not enough to derail its violent pace. The slow and doom-esque final track, "The Giving Tree," is a slight departure from the rest of the album, but serves as an exceptional conclusion to the disc as lyrics such as "Here we are again to celebrate the one we love / Scream our throats red while we sing this song" really strike an emotional chord at the end of an otherwise politically charged record. Bottom Line: This record is an absolute must-have for fans of aggressive music. Every aspect of All Is Not Lost is raw and powerful and ultimately represents everything that hardcore and metal listeners should look for in a record. This is hands down my favorite record of the new year, and I don't doubt that it will also be the early favorite of many others.

54 comments

Post Comment

ARCHITECTkills_ 2/6/2007 9:33:44 PM

first post!!! wahooo!

Architect All Is Not Lost

54 comments

Related Links

Architect Album Reviews

Top News This Week