Jurassic Park 2 was a great movie. There we said it. Yes, it’s not as good as the first one, and yes there are some pretty obvious flaws, but it was still incredibly enjoyable. ‘All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us’, Architects’ seventh album, is to their last (‘Lost Forever/Lost Together’) what Jurassic Park 2 is to Jurassic Park.
If ‘Lost Forever/Lost Together’ was an 8/10, then ‘All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us’ is a strong 7. It’s certainly more consistent than LF/LT was. However, its consistency is its downfall. At best you can say that Architects have found “their sound” and are now having a grand old time making some quality metalcore with a heavy tech-metal influence. At worst you could say that they’ve run out of fresh ideas. Where you fall in the spectrum between the two will very much depend on how you vibe with the album itself, but there certainly isn’t anything musically bad on ‘All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us’.
When you consider the massive change in sound between ‘Hollow Crown’ into ‘The Here & Now’ into ‘Daybreaker’, and the smaller but still noticeable shift from there into ‘Lost Forever/Lost Together’, having an album which feels like the last one’s part two is a little disappointing.
For all this talk of disappointment and over-use of similar riffs, ‘All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us’ is actually a very good album. If you took this one album and placed it against much of the music that would appear in the iTunes related artists it would kick them to the ground, spit on them, and call them names without breaking a sweat.
It’s very obvious why the three songs (‘A Match Made In Heaven’, ‘Gone With The Wind’ and ‘Downfall’) are the ones that were released first off of the album. ‘A Match Made In Heaven’ is one of the biggest and best songs not just on this album but the last few, and ‘Downfall’ is one of the better ones that demonstrates their forays into modern tech metal. ‘All Love is Lost’ and 8-minute ambient-infused closer ‘Momento Mori’ you simply cannot mess with, and it will be these songs that will dominate the live sets.
Though the album very rarely deviates, it feels more like Architects have found the kind of music that they want to play, rather than they don’t have anything more to give. These last two albums are solid gold foundations for Architects to build upon, and after seven albums it still feels like Architects’ best days are yet to come.
ANDY LEDDINGTON