Naysayer's Beware. Architects have hit new heights.
You'll listen to this album and immediately you will become overwhelmed with an enormous sense of "they've nailed it, they've absolutely done it". This album is their Sempiternal, their Blackest Beautiful, with 11 tracks of some of the best Metal tunes you'll hear all year, actually scrap that, this decade. When the band released Naysayer a few weeks ago in the lead up to this album release, the excitement levels and hype started to hit epic levels. There was undoubtedly a concern that when the album did drop the energy and brilliance of this tune alone might not stretch across a whole album, but it well and truly does. It's savagely heavy, beautifully melodic with music that sounds like it's been ripped straight from the hearts of each and every member of this band. They're not to be considered one of the "up and coming" bands with potential after this is released, they're at their peak and you'd be a fool to miss out.
The Brightonians have always released killer albums, you need only look at Hollow Crown and Ruin but with Lost Forever//Lost Together they've raised their game to new levels. One of the main reasons it is so good, is this real sense throughout of you don't really know what to expect. It's not just run of the mill Metalcore, with the standard song structure leading into a breakdown. Instead it's full of excellent intricacies, the guitar work on The Devil Is Near is a perfect example of this. In between some insane interchanging riffs, you've got these frantic guitar licks adding brilliant depth to the track, and as the song comes to its conclusion you're hit with this violin section from out of nowhere. There isn't really a bad track on the album, but if you had to pick out some highlights it would definitely include the instrumental Red Hypergiant with a thought provoking sound bite from American astronomer Carl Sagan acting as an interlude on the record, as well as the face melting C.A.N.C.E.R and the excellent Colony Collapse.
This is their moment to shine. When this album officially drops on 10th March, support British Metal and buy this album. You won't regret it.