HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Ruin – Architects
On the back of ARCHITECTS releasing their tenth studio album the classic symptoms of a broken spirit, there is a lot of reflection and back gazing across the metal landscape. Ten albums is a monumental accomplishment and should absolutely be celebrated, whether you’re a fan of the band or not, because there aren’t many bands that make it so far. What’s more, the band has undergone a tremendous amount of change in the 15 years since their sophomore album Ruin. Sonically, Ruin is lightyears away from where they are today, but it absolutely set everything in motion for the Brighton-based quintet. The first album to feature seemingly-evergreen vocalist Sam Carter and bassist Alex Dean, both of whom remain today, it signalled the start of their meteoric rise to the top of the metalcore scene and hinted at the further greatness to come.
Before the arena-sized choruses, before the deep tragedy experienced by the band and even before the now-iconic ‘BLEGHs’ that pervade every ARCHITECTS release (we knew they weren’t retiring them like Sam said they were), the band was a far more raucous and unhinged beast than they are today. Instead, their music was filled with roars, riffs, breakdowns and blastbeats. Looking back as we can now, you can see this as the first step in their bid for world domination, and how it set them up to fully realise their vision on the seminal Hollow Crown just two years later.
And while many will think of Hollow Crown as ARCHITECTS‘ crowning glory that firmly set them in the upper echelons of metalcore, Ruin came along in a banner year for the genre. From SUICIDE SILENCE‘s The Cleansing and PARKWAY DRIVE‘s Horizon, to THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN‘s Ire Works and EVERY TIME I DIE‘s The Big Dirty, 2007 brought us some of metalcore’s most celebrated bands and influential releases, whether they were starting their careers or solidifying their status. Ruin rode this cultural wave to spectacular effect – quality, aside. This is an album that came along at the perfect time to make sure ARCHITECTS could stake their claim as the next big thing on the next big scene.
That’s not to take away from the brilliance of Ruin, even if upon release, the album was met with middling-to-good reviews, which feels harsh. Tracks like Running From The Sun and Buried At Sea are quintessential early ARCHITECTS and you can hear the foundations that they laid for later works on Lost Forever // Lost Together and even their more recent, relatively softer work since All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us. Because even back in 2007, their mastery of the soft-hard dynamic was already present, if far more subtle; their judgment of when to let instruments, phrases and moments stretch out and breathe is spellbinding. Just take a look at the creeping atmospheric instrumental track Sail This Ship Alone, or the math-leaning military precision stop-start of I Can’t See The Light. They command every second of Ruin and bend it to their will to deliver a dizzying and gratifying metalcore experience.
But Ruin provides so much more than that. When metalcore was booming, it would have been a safe shout for ARCHITECTS to deliver a metalcore-by-numbers release that blended in to the burgeoning scene. But instead, they borrowed as much from mathcore and death metal as from more gloomy climes like sludge and even a bit of doom. Tracks like Low and Always, for example are low slung brutes that sulk and stomp under Carter‘s unmistakable and inimitable vocal style to set them apart from the bustling crowd.
Poll any ARCHITECTS fan today and they’ll have a ranking of the band’s albums. Wherever Ruin places on that list most will recognise that it stands to be one of the most important moments in the band’s history because it showed that they had found all the parts to make them work. Without Ruin, there simply isn’t the ARCHITECTS of today. And that’s just not a world worth thinking about.
Ruin was originally released October 25th 2007 via United By Fate, Distort and Century Media Records.
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