A CONVERSATION WITH... ARCHERS
As their UK/EU tour wraps up, Midwestern metal-band Archers takes a look at the year ahead.
Picture by Luke Rogers
What to expect when you go to a heavy metal show:
Music you’ll need earplugs for, moshpits and headbanging galore, and a new Culver’s order.
That last one might just be for the Midwestern-based band Archers. For anyone unfamiliar with bands and the Midwest, there was a time where so many punk, rock, ‘emo’ bands were rising from the fields and taking the US by storm. Think Twenty One Pilots, Hot Mulligan, and Smashing Pumpkins, to name a few.
And while the internet’s attention now jumps across the country, Archers has grown only stronger with a blossoming fanbase that grows as they do. Like many bands with their level of charm and talent, it’s easy to see why.
Lead singer Nathaniel’s voice carries through any venue, and guitarist Ben, drummer Grayson, and bassist Drew put on a show that could make even the shyest bystander into a moshpit starter.
But of course, when they’re off stage, they’re going to be leading with their pleases and thank yous.
“We’ve been told that we're the most chill group of people. Most of the time there's a stigma of people being wild and crazy in this genre, and that part of the world does exist in our community. But for us and the people that we generally associate with, we're very much here to do the job and we love it. We enjoy the fact that we've built this together and it's been so much fun. We're just a group of goofballs on tour. But we're really not the type to be hanging from the rafters and screaming and causing a ruckus, to be honest with you.”
Not that they’re calling out any bands in particular, but they’re taking their steady rise within the industry very seriously. Both Nathaniel and Ben sat down and explained how there was no back-up option for them. The band had to succeed.
“Music was a part of me. I had no reference in it to understand where it was coming from or what I liked. I grew up very much away from pop culture. I kind of grew up conservative Christian, very sheltered, homeschooled. I wasn't even allowed to listen to anything with a drum beat in it until many years into my life.”
“I remember getting piano lessons when I was younger as that was the only lessons my family could afford. I just remember thinking, ‘I can’t take a piano on stage, this is stupid!’ So when I finally went to small shows to see bands like The Color Morale, Memphis May Fire, and all those bands when they were first starting out, I remember thinking how cool it all was. So I never really tried to do anything else, which ultimately could’ve been a bad move. But it's been working out. I probably should’ve thought of a backup plan at some point,” Nathaniel jokes.
Ben had a different way into music, one that had a few more boyband tunes in it. “I don't know what it was about Backstreet Boys specifically, but there was always something about them. Back then, my brain couldn’t comprehend how to make it a job but I wanted to figure out. Then in middle school discovering Blink 182 and Green Day really led me down into rock music. It made me want to pick up a guitar and learn an instrument.”
With a band like Archers, that draws inspiration from A Day to Remember and Asking Alexandria to The Band Camino and Needtobreathe, just reading about their music can make it hard to picture what they actually sound like.
One unique aspect the band has that can help any listener nail down an Archers song is Nathaniel’s voice. He’s not bragging or boasting when he says he has a unique voice. “It’s not better or worse, it’s just different. What sets our music apart is my vocals and delivery on top of it all. Because we have songs that range across different spaces, the thing that really ties them all together is my vocals and the message involved. We do want to try to keep a through-line with the music, especially since our duo release of ‘Made for Love’ and ‘Perfect Strangers.’
“We fell in love with that particular style of music and that's what we're currently trying to recreate. We did a record in between that, which was cool, but it was kind of a departure just to say we did. We realised that we didn't love the way that that went and we decided to go back to what we love. Songs like ‘Say So’, ‘The Dirt’, and the few releases that we've got slated for the rest of this year should be in that same vein."
“‘Made for Love’ encompasses everything we do into one song. That’s structurally the most creative we've ever gotten. I really love how we came up with the structure of that song. I love how it builds into the first chorus and I love how the last time through is a big drop-out. It’s really one of those songs you can blast and enjoy,” Ben adds.
But above all else, their songs are about what makes each member happy. They want to explore what sounds good for Drew, Paul, Ben, and Nathaniel because when they explore those different avenues, they craft songs that encompass themselves as artists and as people.
It helps that the fans like it too.
And even though they’ve been touring the US, UK, and Europe, they’ve been finding time to write their first ever full-length album. It’s more disjointed than they would have wanted, but they will not be complaining about any tour they’re on. They’re all taking days in LA to write the album and finding random moments to write lyrics and try things out, but they’re gearing up for some time in the summer to really make an Archers album a full-fledged reality. “There's going to be a lot of themes that people have heard from us in the past like love and loss. One of the themes that we're really trying to nail down is something that's not necessarily unique to us, but it's very important to our experience as a band. It’s about how long we've been doing it and how hard we've been grinding this whole time. There’s a lot of talk about burnout and what it's like to do this thing for so long and never really know if one, it's what you really want, or two, if you can actually achieve it. I think that's going to be the through-line that takes shape through that record. The hard part is to try to make it relatable to people's other ambitions because everybody has something that they want out of life. Pulling on that string is what I'm trying to go for with that,” Nathaniel explains.
It can feel a bit juxtaposing to be sitting in a room, on one of the first nights of a band’s UK/EU tour and talk about being in a struggling band. But the band has always been aware of the reality of the music industry. It’s why you’ll see them juggle so many jobs while on tour -- loading in and loading out, running their own playback, working wherever they can in the backend, because they were rocking the DIY lifestyle for so long.
“If this ever, God forbid, ended up not being the be all, end all for us then I'd probably find a job in the touring space. I like doing technical stuff and so does Ben. I'd probably either get something like an RF management, a playback tec, or something along those lines, anything really,” Nathaniel says. “But honestly this is where I think I'm supposed to be. I think we're doing something cool here.”
Now that the tour has wrapped up, and the band’s already reminiscing on old favourites like Germany and London, and new ones like Prague and Milan, it’s time to head home and do what they do best.
And if you’re wondering about some hometown favourites, the Culver’s order is: Bacon Deluxe Single with no raw onion, and swapping out the fries for the pretzel bites, and a regular sized Coke Zero. Yum.