Architects
with Dead and Divine, Fall City Fall and Counterpart
Saturday, May 7, 7 p.m.
Avenue Theatre  (9030-118 Ave.)

I caught up with Dan Searle during a shopping experience in Southhampton, England. He was looking forward to getting to the local venue and playing some FIFA football on xBox. His team, the Brighton Seagulls, were doing well and he had sport on the brain. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised by how well a Brit who has toured so vastly and was currently in the throes of a footie high could so clearly recollect the Gateway to the North.

“Last time we were there Edmonton was fricking freezing,” recalls Architects drummer Searle. “I remember almost losing control of our car and nearly flipping the trailer. But then we got to the venue and the show was excellent. Edmonton is one of the best places for us to play. There is definitely has a whole vibe in Edmonton, good people I suppose. I wouldn’t say that there are comparisons to any other cities but there is definitely a solid middle Canada vibe.”

Currently touring in support of their latest release The Here And Now, Searle and the Architects are on a tour tear. Getting from place to place, especially these days, is never really that easy. But, when you are doing something you love the easy is easy and the hard is worth it.

“This is one of our biggest tours,” Searle says. “In the UK it is easy for us because we have played here so many times and people like us everywhere...it’s as easy as touring can get. We have all our friends out and at the same time, there are a lot of new fans. It’s nice to see that we are still moving forward, especially with a new album. At the same time, there is still some negative things that come up every once in a while but you deal with it.  After all, I don’t want to get a normal job, this is way more fun.”

“We are now playing for three or four thousand people,” continues Searle. “We are getting girls crying and shaking, mostly at Sam (lead vocals) because of his pretty blonde locks. We get gifts and stuff, it’s always nice. But we are just normal people and have been doing it for such a long time. When you‘ve been doing it this long, you can’t lose your head. The bands that explode out of nowhere usually become arseholes because it happens too fast for them to properly react. We keep ourselves pretty much level headed even with the success we’ve been having lately.”

And with success comes a wave of people trying to define what you do. Sometimes they are done accurately but mostly they are just guesses. You can summate what someone does, but to them, you are just trying to put a fancy name on something simple.

“We’ve been called a lot of stuff, from emo to death metal, everyone is pretty confused by us,” Searle says. “I pretty much disagree with everything that they try to put on us. Like, people saying that we come from a metal background but there is really no metal influence. People love to put you in a category but with us it’s so hard because of the way our sound changes from album to album.”

For their follow up to The Here And Now, the band has decided to go with the title Somewhat Loud Progressive Post-Punk Edge-Core Thrash Monster Crunch. Well, not really. But hey, it could set a standard and clarify a few things.