Archspire: Absolute Precision
Canadian speed demons ARCHSPIRE shot to prominence with their wildly audacious Relentless Mutation album back in 2017, blowing our minds with their abundance of skill, execution and rapid musicianship. A shining example of this being Involuntary Doppelganger which clocks in at a whopping 350BPM. It’s almost time for the arrival of the heavily anticipated next instalment entitled Bleed The Future which has absolutely no intention of even nudging the brakes on this juggernaut.
“We really wanted to focus on the choruses and the hooks this time round,” explains guitarist Tobi Morelli. “We didn’t want to just repeat ourselves and do another Relentless Mutation. Obviously, we have still kept it sounding like ARCHSPIRE but we wanted more of those headbang moments so that when COVID is all over with people can come out to the shows and just really get into the songs. This album took us about two to three years to make. It usually takes us a while to write an album but this time around we really wanted to take our time. We’re all really hands-on in the process and we work as a team. It’s always a little nerve-wracking going into a new album, like what if we blow it?”
With most vocations you learn new tips and tricks as you progress, allowing you to be more efficient and proactive in the long run. “With Relentless Mutation we kind of started tracking our progress. Like once we would complete a song we would do a ‘pre-pro’, like a really rough demo and we would kind of analyse it,” discusses Tobi. “This time around once we came up with a solid idea we would record it right away, get the basic idea down and then build up a solid foundation. It meant that when we went into the studio we had a much better representation of the album in comparison to previous releases. It allowed us to have a better understanding of what the outcome of the songs was going to be. With Relentless Mutation we made quite a few changes during our time at the studio but with Bleed The Future there were very few changes. It’s all a process of trial and error. We would sit down at the end of a song and think ‘right, is this good enough or is this just us basically jerking off?’”
Unlike most bands where the pandemic made it increasingly difficult to be productive, ARCHSPIRE were quite lucky and managed to evade significant periods of inactivity by utilising the many technological advancements available to musicians to keep the ball rolling. “Before COVID we had already began working on songs but still had quite a lot of work to do. When the lockdowns began happening we pretty much just communicated via messages and created a communal Soundcloud where we would upload any ideas we had put together individually and then when we had the chance to get together we could sit through all the material we had built up and begin to piece it together. This approach worked so much better and even if we had ten ideas and only used one it was so much more beneficial than having one idea and then not even using it in the end. We had riffs which we kind of put on the backburner with a view to potentially finding a spot for it later on and it worked very well.”
Being able to record such technically proficient material is one thing but being able to go out on tour and perform these tracks, night in, night out to a high standard is an entirely different mountain to climb. ARCHSPIRE have devised a way of being able to streamline their process and ensure they can be on their ‘A’ game every time they hit the stage. “When we play live we all play with in-ear monitors and play to a click track which helps keep everybody in check,” states Tobi. “We don’t even play to each other anymore. With technology being so rad these days we actually play to our album minus ourselves so I’m playing to a studio guitar track and studio drum track then we can customise our own mix using our phones. We have no choice but to get locked in and if we mess up it doesn’t throw anyone else off. It just keeps it as clean and precise as possible. There are also a lot of variables to consider throughout the set, like if someone needs a bit of a breather after a particularly intense part of the set so we work on our scheduling a lot too. This really helps for when we have instances where we maybe have to cut a song or if we have a shorter setlist at a festival and we can move things around. It’s all about the stage preparation too, even that is technical!”
Bleed The Future is out now via Season of Mist.
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