Architects – Vice

Dude, it appears that butt rock is alive and well in Kansas City. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing – there are moments here where I was totally down with what Architects were building. I just wish – to keep the analogy rolling along even further than it has to – they’d leave some thumbprints in the mortar or scribble some graffiti in the hallway or something. Just give it some personality, you know?

Now, when I say butt rock, I mean it – this has the same sort of swagger as bands like Jet or The Strokes or something, but fronted by a dude that could easily belt it out in a Skid Row cover band without nary a flinch; the biggest bummer, again, is just how polished this record is overall.

They do things like insert little pick-screams at the end of riffs, repeatedly, as well as utilize some totally unnecessary vocal harmonies that delegates this thing into a slightly lamer tier than it needs to be. It’s as if the band (which is apparently comprised of three brothers and another dude) is afraid to really get their hands dirty and need to gloss over the dirt – which would add and not detract from a record of this ilk – by instead relying on lameass rock tricks that have been done to death over the years and were considered lame by the time the cassingle was reaching its heyday.

All this is to say that Vice is unabashedly a rock and roll album. And at times it’s a damn good one; on songs like “Daddy Wore Black” or “Mrs. Doyle”, they pull it off smashingly: there’s merciless swagger, broke-down, bad luck themes and some goddamn catchy hooks. But peppered throughout are sections where the vocalist cannot resist showing off his barbershop-quartet style, or the band insists on yet another pick-scream or unneeded backup chorus. That’s when you realize the songs are either a) slightly too pretty for their own good or b) need to be chopped off at the knees a bit sooner so you don’t mind how flawless or lacking any real fury they are.