Dan Searle chews things over in silence for a few seconds. He’s been asked this question before, a couple of years ago now, but he remembers the answer he gave then: “Pain.” He lets out a half-knowing-laugh, half-resigned-sigh as he contemplates his reply this time round. Eventually, he settles on it. “Desperation.” It is, of course, reductive to define any body of artistic work by one single word. But when it comes to navigating the deep, dense, dark layers of an Architects album, it’s not a bad jumping off point at least. “Pain”, of course, came to define not only the band’s 2018 album, Holy Hell, but the wider shadow over Architects, following the desperately sad loss of their founder and leader – and Dan’s twin brother – Tom Searle in 2016. Holy Hell, Dan told this writer pri...
