Sam Carter of Architects has written publicly about what a year of online commentary on his voice has done to him. "My anxiety and constant focus on my voice have gotten me to a place where the joy of performing has been taken away from me," he wrote. "Whenever I go to scream, the voice inside my head stops me from being able to do the job that I've done for the last 20 or so years."
He dates the worst of it to Rock am Ring, where he tried a new technique in front of a crowd he puts at ninety thousand and had, in his words, a really tough day. "The more I tried, the crueler the comments over the summer got, and it led me to a place where I was physically and emotionally shot."
What follows in the post is unusually specific for this kind of statement. He is in therapy weekly and on medication for the anxiety, he has been working with a vocal coach since the summer, and he says the effort itself has become the problem: "everything I've been doing, and the stress I'm putting on myself, is ultimately making it and my mental health worse".
The ending is the part worth quoting whole. "I dreamt of having a 'Sam's Back' moment, but that's not real life. And maybe this is actually my moment to come back to a life where I'm not thinking about this shit every waking moment." The band have been touring since they broke an eighteen month silence with "Machine".