Architects + Thy Art Is Murder + While She Sleeps @ MTELUS, Montreal

Architects performed at the MTelus with While She Sleeps and Thy Art is Murder for the Holy Hell Tour, to support their latest album released last November via Epitaph.

The night started off at 7:30PM sharp in a sold-out venue where not a single empty seat could be found. While She Sleeps started off the show with a short (30 minutes only) but effective 6-songs set. The British metalcore band delivered a straightforward performance, focusing on their two latest releases You Are We released back in 2017 and their latest opus So What? released last month. The band played classics from their third album, such as the title track “You Are We”, “Civil Isolation” but also my two favourite songs from this album: “Hurricane” and “Silence Speaks”. The first has a monster chorus, while the latter is simply one of the best songs the band has ever written (the fact that Oli Sykes from Bring Me The Horizon is featured in that song doesn’t have much to do with it but his talent definitely makes the song even better than what it already is).

While She Sleeps also showcased two songs from their latest album, “Anti-Social” and “The Guilty Party”, that has the perfect combination of core breakdowns and alt-metal chorus. The band, led by frontman Lawrence Taylor, delivered a solid performance from start to finish and could have benefited from a longer set time to acquire more new fans.

Australian deathcore band Thy Art is Murder was next. The band, unfortunately, had to perform without their vocalist CJ McMahon that got replaced by Nick Arthur from Molotov Solution. Thankfully, it is not due to bad news, on the contrary. CJ had to leave tour as his baby was on the way and Nick, therefore, fills in for the remainder of the tour. I won’t lie about how I felt about seeing them on the line-up though… I didn’t think that it made much sense for a deathcore band to play in between two metalcore bands and was actually hoping that the recent event would make them play a shorter set and force them to play first. Even though deathcore isn’t my favourite music genre (being more of a metalcore and pop-punk type of guy), Thy Art is Murder and Nick Arthur turned the whole venue upside down, and the crowd couldn’t have been happier about it.

With rapid riffs and doomy breakdowns from songs such as “Dear Desolation” and “Puppet Master”, Thy Art is Murder was as technically impressive live as they are on their records. The band also performed a few songs from Holy War, such as the title track, “Fur and Claw”, “Coffin Dragger”. Last but not least, the Australian deathcore band gave us a taste of their upcoming fifth studio album to be released on June 26^th, 2019 by ending their set with its title track “Human Target”. (Note to self: despite the lights flashing nonstop throughout their performance, I’m happy to now know that I am not prone to seizures, Yay!)

Finally, at 9:30PM, it was time for none other than British metalcore band Architects, led by frontman Sam Carter. As the Holy Hell tour wouldn’t be named this way without focusing most of their set on this great album, the band began their set with “Death Is Not Defeat” and “Modern Misery” to start off strong and show their fans that they weren’t messing around. The band continued with a few songs from their previous album All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us, with “Nihilist”, “Deathwish”, and “Phantom Fear” that are the first three songs of the album (in that order).

The band then dived back to the emotional and cathartic songs that compose Holy Hell. Vocalist Sam Carter not only did an amazing vocal job on the album itself but shared the same raw emotion and sentiment in his live performance. It truly showed that these songs are a way for him and the rest of the band to deal with the recent loss of their guitarist, founding member, and primary songwriter Tom Searle in August 2016. The crowd was delighted by the performance and showed so much love towards the band that frontman Sam Carter pointed out that it felt like a hometown show, before thanking the crowd for coming out to see them. Not only that but he actually described the crowd as being the definition of a perfect crowd (Take that, Toronto!).

With other classics such as “A Match Made in Heaven”, “Hereafter”, “Gone With the Wind”, “Doomsday” to close the show, Architects gave their fans’ tickets worth every single penny (and more!). Finishing their set with “Doomsday”, the last song Tom Searle was working on before passing, put even more emphasis on his central role in the band and on how talented he was. He is greatly missed, and the band is honouring his memory every night on stage, for the joy of all their fans.