The only Archive album I’ve heard in its entirety is “You All Look The Same To Me”, and I absolutely love it. I normally can’t handle those epically long songs, but ‘Again’ is a definite exception. You mentioned them having monotonous, repetitive hooks which I suppose is true but I feel like they do a nice job of keeping to rest of the song interesting and varied vocally and instrumentally (I’m specifically talking about ‘Again’ here). Where you say those types of hooks really grab you, they usually turn me off, so this is a band I’ll have to tentatively pursue further.
I’m pretty sure I have “Noise” laying around on my hard drive somewhere but I have not gotten around to listening to it yet, with the exception of ‘F*ck U’…another good song but I didn’t enjoy it as much as most of the songs on “You All Look the Same to Me”. Perhaps I should make “Lights” my next listening venture instead??
As for the first vid you posted there from the new album, I have to admit I didn’t care for that at all.
Not sure if it was because it seemed a lot more up-tempo than what I’m used to hearing from them, but it didn’t seem all that spectacular lyrically either. Are there any different songs from the new album you can recommend?