10th July 2019

Under The Influence #6: Sunfall on “Lost Together // Lost Forever” by Architects!

Brighton Progressive Metalcore heroes Architects have reached incredible heights given how heavy their core sound is. If you’d told them that they’d be headlining Arena’s in 2019 way back in 2004 when then started out, they’d have laughed in your face. It’s been a journey of struggle with numerous line-up changes in the earlier days before the tragic loss of guitarist Tom Searle to cancer which brought a tear to the eye of the Global Metal community. Produced and Recorded by Henrik Udd in Gothenburg Sweden, “Lost Forever//Lost Together” appeared in 2014 marking Architects debut for Epitaph Records…

Oli from Sunfall: “This was a hard one; to pick an influence to write about. I can’t talk about influences and not mention the band Architects. While I could talk all day about the album “All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us”, the album “Lost Forever // Lost Together” had a profound impact on me musically. I first got into the band through the track “Even If You Win, You’re Still A Rat”, but then I heard the tracks Naysayer, Gravedigger and Broken Cross; to say the least I was hooked after. There was just a huge elegance to that album, every song is calculated and can reach moments of utter heaviness but then moments of huge beautiful melodic soundscapes.

That rubbed off on my writing so much, and ever since then I just fell in love with ambience and mixing it with heavy music. That was the basis for Sunfall. In fact, the track “The Empty Black” is my tip of the hat to Tom Searle (Architects founder and core song writer who died from skin cancer aged 28). I captured what that album did for me musically and mixed it in with my Hardcore and Deathcore influences and while unspoken, it’s dedicated to him, his song writing and lyrical abilities. What is now Sunfall was originally meant to be a studio only solo project for me.

I was jamming along to that album and then I decided to try write in their tuning and couldn’t. So I took it on myself as a task to write a EP in it and release it as a start as online solo project, to say the least I struggled a lot at first. I didn’t have the production skills to make the guitar sound as aggressive as in the tuning you don’t have power chords available in the low end, so I had to find new ways to write and play in-order to get that aggressive sound. Over time I got an ear for it and was able to write tracks like Breathe and The Empty Black then before I knew it; I was in a band (Sunfall) playing those songs so as a result we play in what I call the “Architects tuning” which is C sharp standard with the low C-Sharp dropped to either G-Sharp or F-Sharp…. Imagine a 7 string guitar in drop F-Sharp without the 6th string.

Lyrically as-well, Tom’s and Sam’s writing on that album too are absolutely amazing, the stand out tracks are “Broken Cross” and “The Distant Blue” for lyrics. Their lyrics can get extremely personal to their own lives but also convey a strong message about their world views and it’s done in such a poetic way. Here’s a snippet from “The Distant Blue” for you to just see how poetic their lyrics can get.

“Their bodies made a mountain, a ladder to the stars
When they reached up to the sun, it only left them with scars
All the saints and the sinners will reap what they sow
So they stood back and watched their bitterness grow”

The vocal delivery was flawless and how it fits in with the music is just otherworldly. It just really set the bar personally for the level of music I need to be writing. I could go into a lot of depth on this album, so all I’m going to say is listen to it start to finish. This was a monumental influence for me writing Sunfall’s music and the lyrics for the songs I did write lyrics for. For quick mentions on a few other huge influences on me, I have to mention Slipknot, System Of A Down, Bound In Fear, Fit For An Autopsy, Metallica and in more recent times Loathe, Alpha Wolf etc…”