Two decades into their career, UK metalcore stars Architects know that name recognition isn’t always an asset. “We’re aware that it takes a lot more to get people’s attention on your 11th album,” songwriter and drummer Dan Searle tells Apple Music. “We recognized that we had to aim really, really high if we wanted to grab people’s attention.” The result is The Sky, the Earth & All Between, an album that explodes with punishing breakdowns, bubbling electronics, and Sam Carter’s impressive scream/sing/scream acrobatics. “We felt strongly that there was another gear we had uncovered,” Searle says. “We experimented a lot on the last couple albums, and that had opened a lot of doors. Suddenly, I could see this world for us to head into. There was this prophecy in our heads about what we could achieve.” With kinetic singles that take on tribalism (“Whiplash”), mortality (“Blackhole”), and disgruntled fans (“Seeing Red”), Searle realized early on that the record didn’t have a unifying lyrical theme. “I spent five months trying to think of an album title that would put a nice little bow on it, that was memorable and poetic, so I ended up using a lyrical reference,” he says. “I just felt like it suited the mood and aesthetic of the album.” Below, he discusses each song. “Elegy” “I don’t think we’ve ever had a song like this before. Thematically, it’s about defiance. It’s about overcoming obstacles, overcoming doubt—other people’s doubt. I think this might not even have existed in reality, but we had created this mindset where people doubted us. So, it just felt like the right thing to open the album with a statement of defiance: ‘Fuck you if you doubted us. We’re still here.’ It’s complete bravado—a bit of a chest-out, standing-tall statement of belief and intent.” “Whiplash” “This song is about tribalism, the world we live in today. I don’t really gravitate towards writing songs that are political statements these days. Looking back at our previous work, we’ve become different people. So, I try not to do that anymore because I just don’t know how I’m going to feel next year. This song is a bit broader: It’s such a divided world right now, and there’s so many forces contributing towards that. So, it’s a bit of a cynical commentary on how we’re incapable of treating each other with respect when we have a difference of opinion and see the world a different way.” “Blackhole” “This one revisits some themes from our older stuff a little bit. It’s pondering mortality and the battles that we face day to day—and how those battles look when they’re silhouetted by the backdrop of dying, by how insignificant so much of our suffering is in the face of inevitability. Obviously, all of us see friends or family get sick, and this stirs up all sorts of thoughts and feelings within us. When we wrote that song, that had come up in our lives. I was asking myself, ‘What’s this all about? And why am I wasting my time suffering over nothing?’” “Everything Ends” “This is about acknowledging that no matter how much I’m suffering in a particular moment, that suffering will end. That could be dying, but it could also be when you’re in a bad space and it feels like it’s forever. And then you wake up one day, like, ‘Oh, I feel kind of better. And I don’t know when that started happening.’ A lot of it is conversational in the sense that I’m almost communicating with my partner in the song. There’s a little bit of excuse-making and apology. I’m aware that when I’m suffering, the person that has to bear the brunt of that is my wife. And that’s probably the same for everyone—their partner gets the worst of it. So, the song is a reminder that no matter how bad things get, the sun will rise again.” “Brain Dead” “This is a collaboration with House of Protection, and I feel like this is probably the most fun song on the record. It was definitely written in that spirit. I had this idea for a song called ‘Brain Dead’ for a while, and it suited this hardcore punk aesthetic that we delved into on this song. I was thinking about modern life and the way we anaesthetize ourselves, whether it’s through phone addiction or alcohol or weed or brainwashing ourselves with news media or whatever. So many of us are unconsciously just giving up our lives, and we kind of yearn to be numbed and not have to feel too much. Would we rather just be dumb and ignorant? There’s a part of me that would. So, it’s a tongue-in-cheek hardcore anthem for stupidity.” “Evil Eyes” “On this song, I’m anthropomorphizing my own inner dialogue of anxiety as something that’s outside of me. It’s sort of like me saying, ‘I’m going to overcome this; I’m overcoming this.’ But the verses are about me just being furious at the anxiety and trying to attack it and venting my frustration at dealing with these feelings all the time. But ultimately, the song is quite a positive one. There is some defiance, but it’s more about me overcoming myself and overcoming the self-destructive qualities that I have, so I can live another day.” “Landmines” “This is about me knowing that I need to do things to be a better person, a better husband, a better dad, a better human being—but ignoring those things, setting them aside, making excuses, and carrying on living in a less-than-desirable way. It’s about being self-destructive, and it’s about knowing you’re doing it and carrying on anyway. I feel as though I see that everywhere. It’s like when we know we’ve got to do something, but we don’t do it. And we all experience that. We know what’s good for us, but we so often don’t do it. And we make excuses all the time. We justify our apathy. It’s part of being human.” “Judgement Day” (feat. Amira Elfeky) “I think this is a bit of an old-man song in a way. It’s about digitally induced dread, this experience of living under the cloud of what the internet shows me and the way that it distills all the terrible things that are happening in the world into a neat little package for me every day. So, I’m asking, ‘How natural is that? Are we really wired to deal with that?’ I really feel for young people, and I can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up under that cloud. I’ve got young kids, and I wonder what it’s doing to them. I’m not sure it’s a good thing.” “Broken Mirror” “I suppose this is a little bit like ‘Everything Ends’ in the sense that I think the song is me getting mad at myself about being a bad partner. I’m probably a little bit hard on myself at times, and when I feel that I’ve gone too far lyrically and I’m being too brutal on myself, Sam usually reads the lyrics and says, ‘No, that’s exactly what it should be like.’ So, I guess Sam probably experiences this maybe even more than me. But I was just trying to examine who I am and how I operate within the framework of a human relationship and how much I ask another person to tolerate.” “Curse” “Our producer told me, ‘You can only have one old-man song on this album,’ but I was freaking out about getting old. I’m going gray. I’m reaching that point in my life where the signs of aging are very clear. We can laugh about it, and we ought to just accept it, of course. But it’s weird because my brother died when he was 28, and for a long time, that fueled this total acceptance of aging. I had about eight years of not caring that I’m another year older because Tom died when he was 28. So, every year beyond that is a gift. And then, suddenly, that fuel just ran out. I was like, ‘Oh, fuck. I’m going to be 40, 50, 60…’ But I know I should just make the best of it and enjoy the ride.” “Seeing Red” “Before this record, we did a couple of albums that were less heavy. The internet gave us a bit of a hard time about it, and we took it personally. So, I had this idea that we should write a heavy song about fans wanting us to be heavy, but we should make it fun and a bit of a joke. I think it’s probably one of the first songs we’ve ever written where I had lyrics before anything else. One of the first lines is, ‘I felt it when they said, “We only ever love you when you’re seeing red.”’ That very much set the tone. For all the heavy themes on this record, a lot of it was made in the spirit of fun—especially this song.” “Chandelier” “It’s hard to know how to end an album, but this was very much a purpose-built album-closer. It’s got a little bit of the same DNA as ‘Elegy,’ so it felt like a good way to bookend the album. At first, it felt like quite a bleak song lyrically, but after we finished it, I just had this complete 180 where, suddenly, the lyrics were speaking more of how beautiful life is and how it’ll still be beautiful without us. The world continues to evolve after our light goes out, so we’re just here to enjoy it as best we can and witness it and try to understand it. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. And that’s OK.”