Architect of Lies

Full disclosure: Architect of Lies was one of my first real metal albums. I just got into metal back at the beginning of 2008, making me a relative newcomer - and this was the album that did it. It's not hard to see why I'd be hooked - right from the first track this is a very solid album, with great production, amazing vocals, and a lot of catchy hooks to keep the whole thing stuck in your head. That said, now that I have a lot more experience with metal, I can see one big downside to this album: the songs are very similar. To break down the formula, it basically goes: Intro w/ riffs -> Verse -> Chorus -> Verse - > Chorus, and some sort of outro. Making matters worse is the fact that a lot of the choruses, while definitely catchy, sound pretty similar.

It's not even like the band isn't trying to change it up. You can definitely hear them shifting gears throughout the album in terms of rhythm and feel, chilling out on certain tracks and then bringing the heat on others. Unfortunately, the entire album has a very similar sound in terms of the guitar tone/synth sounds and the general roles of the instruments, and making matters much worse is the fact that all the songs are a pretty similar tempo. As such, when combined with the fairly similar song structures and the vocalist's unfortunate knack for singing pretty similar parts throughout the album, it makes the whole thing a bit monotonous as it goes on. In particular, I'd say that the middle of this album gets boring - it definitely picks up towards the end (around track 8 in particular, which is a great song).

With that said, there are still plenty of reasons to give this album a chance. The production is top-notch, with all of the instruments having total clarity and sounding very good. The vocalist is amazing, and the band uses both lower rough vocals and falsetto vocals at the same time, which sounds great. Also worth noting is that the drummer uses a pretty simple style, using very little double bass and sticking to fairly open and stripped down rock beats. It's surprisingly refreshing; in a world full of metal drummers that think they've got something to prove, I love that this guy just lays back and does what feels right. The rest of the band members are equally talented, with some really great lead guitar parts in particular. Lastly, if you ignore the fact that they sound pretty similar, this band has a knack for writing very catchy choruses.

It's also refreshing to hear an album that, while power metal at heart, isn't happy with just following the normal mediocre power metal idioms. Instead, this album is full of melodic death metal influence and is all the better for it. Plus, they aren't singing about elves and orcs and all that. Maybe it's just me, but that gets old quick with a lot of bands, and I'm glad to not see it here. In addition, I love the use of synth in metal, and these guys get some immediate points from me for that. They use it well, mostly filling in with upper harmonies and some occasional melodic stuff.

To conclude: Yes, the album gets a bit monotonous. Regardless of that, this is a kick-ass album that fuses elements of power metal with melodic death metal and does a great job of it. The production's great, and the performances are top-notch. If you want a good and fairly easy listen, or if you want an album to headbang along to during a long drive, look no further: you've found it here.