Despite reaching newfound levels of mainstream success, it’s been a rough decade for Architects: the passing of Tom Searle in 2016 left the band without direction after the momentous ‘All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us,’ forcing them to scramble for a new sound. Of course, the group couldn’t have asked for a better fill-in than Sylosis’ Josh Middleton, who’s riff-writing pushed the band into superstardom with the release of ‘Holy Hell’ and ‘For Those That Wish To Exist.’ With Middleton now having exited the band as well, 2025 is another precarious crossroads for Architects, with ‘The Sky, The Earth & All Between’ aiming to solidify the group’s place at the forefront of popular metalcore. The greatest shortcoming of the album, then, is that it fails to do just that— by contrast, the new album leaves the group’s way forward less clear than ever, and has us thoroughly underwhelmed for the most part.

Many fans will no doubt be pleased to hear that, after the lighter offerings of ‘the classic symptoms of a broken spirit,’ the band are back to pounding breakdowns and stomping riffs: that’s right, Architects are heavy again, even if their stranglehold on a catchy melodic chorus hasn’t slipped at all. Opener ‘Elegy’ showcases the band’s attempt to balance both sides of their sound well— featuring a tension-fuelled synth intro that quickly gives way to furious blast beats, groaning guitar riffs and a show-stopper of a central hook, the track rips through its runtime and is a thoroughly exhilarating cut to boot. Many of the highlights on ‘The Sky…’ follow a similar formula, sprinting to the finish with just enough melodic material to hold them over. Lead single ‘Seeing Red’ still kills as part of the wider project (even despite its annoying childlike vocal snippets), allowing its Gojira-esque pick scrapes and gigantic chorus to carry it through, and ‘Blackhole’ amps itself up even further, thundering along via a main riff so overly dramatic, it’s almost comical. For fans of any of the group’s past material, standouts like these are bound to be a delight.

It really is shocking to see the album weigh itself down in so much inconsistency though, especially given how safe Architects are playing it on the majority of tracks. ‘The Sky…’ absolutely drags towards the middle, bludgeoning the listener with the same song over, and over, and over, and over again. None of these tracks are necessarily bad— ‘Evil Eyes’ actually contains one of the brightest and best choruses on the project— but it’s hard to imagine too many listeners picking such stale cuts as ‘Landmines’ or ‘Brain Dead’ as a new favourite. Far too often, each of these songs devolves into mindless breakdowns and painfully overblown growls from Sam Carter (who sounds more interested in proving that he can, in fact, growl than he is in actually serving each track), leaving much of the record as a directionless melting pot of half-baked ideas: even the closing ballad ‘Chandelier’ can’t seem to stop itself from indulging in this way, leaving the record on an underwhelming note.

There are, of course, moments of experimentation for the band: though few and far between, these cuts manage to break up the otherwise monotonous flow of the album, even if they usually disappoint anyway. ‘Everything Ends’ provides a welcome respite from the blaring breakdowns, even if the song is so tepid and generic as to resemble a Smash Into Pieces song— a much stronger breathing point is ‘Broken Mirror,’ which retains the intensity of its contemporaries while focusing solely on that dazzling melodic punch the band have nailed in. There’s also ‘Judgement Day,’ a song so ill-conceived that it hardly bears mentioning: though Amira Elfeky does bring a unique vocal timbre into the fold, the song’s stock riffs and grating chorus do her a great disservice and reduce the cut to a shell of what it could’ve been.

None of these songs are helped at all by the album’s overblown production either, which sees Architects leaning further into all their worst qualities as a band. The modern metalcore scene’s obsession with sounding ‘large’ continues to shoot them in the foot— on ‘The Sky…,’ everything is compressed within an inch of its life, leaving each chorus as a wash of vague, indistinct vocal layers and syrupy guitar tones. Carter is beginning to sound less and less human as the years wear on: though we’ve already mentioned his growls, the singing isn’t safe from judgement, soaking itself in all the misused pitch correction of a late 90s Cher song. Though not quite as tasteless as something Sleep Token might employ, the production on this record leaves a bad taste is your mouth, and is sure to thoroughly exhaust the listener across these twelve tracks.

With the release of ‘The Sky, The Earth & All Between,’ Architects are begging a terrible question: does metalcore even need them anymore? On their eleventh studio album, the band are sounding more fresh out of ideas than ever before, returning to a heavier sound out of creative bankruptcy. Though the record is probably just fun enough to hold diehard fans over, it can hardly be described as a strong foot forward for the group— rather, the album leaves Architects in greater need of course correction than ever before.