Photo by Katja Kuhl
Arch Enemy have blazed a trail of Swedish-style melodic death metal round the globe almost since its stylistic birth. Marking their 30th anniversary this year (although as bandleader Michael Amott tells us, choosing to celebrate next year), they have always forged a bridge between the pioneering Gothenburg explosion of the mid 90s and a new wave of metal that'd conquer the world in the 21st century, able to sit alongside those greats and yet also remain a contemporary inspiration.
As they arrive at their twelfth full-length studio album Blood Dynasty, the partnership that started with vocalist Alissa White-Gluz on 2014's War Eternal itself passes the decade mark, and you can hear that decade of collaborative experience and exploration all over an album like this. Michael Amott, who formed the band those 30 years ago having previously played with British death metal heroes Carcass and one of Stockholm's nastiest death metal bands Carnage, sits down to tell us about the pleasures of an album like this at this stage in their career.
With the making of a record like Blood Dynasty, are you looking at the previous album Deceivers as a foundation and knowing where you wanted to take things?
Amott - Every album is a reaction to the last one somehow, trying to do something a little different. We had a lot of successful songs on Deceivers, but it’s very open in that way. It’s an empty canvas in the beginning and you slowly but surely build up stuff. I don’t compare them to each other that much and I don’t feel any pressure. You start to think of the little things like not having a song that starts a certain way, or not having a song at this tempo which would be cool, and we’re just having a great time doing it.
On those new experiments you’ve been slowly integrating the clean vocals from Alissa in alongside the harsh vocals, but there’s also a song Paper Tiger which has a real traditional NWOBHM vibe which feels like a standout swerve, and Liars & Thieves which has more of a d-beat punk feel.
Amott - Paper Tiger is definitely a bit of a throwback riff-wise. I would say myself and the band love that kind of music, we grew up on that old school metal before we went into the thrash and death scenes, and it’s always been a part of Arch Enemy. The foundation of the band when I formed it in ‘95 was to have elements of death, thrash, speed, power, hard rock, and heavy metal in there doing in a really intense way. On Paper Tiger it shines through extra strong maybe. There’s d-beat on the first Arch Enemy album Black Earth from ‘96, and both me and Sharlee [D'Angelo, bassist] have played in really raw punk bands in the 80s before we did metal. My first band was a Discharge-style band like that, so it is embedded in us somehow. It’s a good energy to let out sometimes.
With those swerves and the mix of melodic vocals now, do you really view Arch Enemy as being purely an extreme metal band these days?
Amott - If you zoom out at the whole picture of music, I think most people would consider Arch Enemy to be absolute noise, and when you get into the nitty-gritty of the metal scene of melodic black-thrash with hints of melodic death metal, it gets very specific! We love to put things in little boxes and to feel comfortable. I think Arch Enemy I would still call some sort of extreme metal because it’s maybe not your grandpa’s metal, as much as we do love that stuff and have influences of what we grew up on there. We have evolved as musicians and songwriters though and I see no reason to hold back really as to why we wouldn’t play with some of those other styles or rhythms. We have some songs that are far out there musically but once it goes through the Arch Enemy filter so to speak and everybody has played on it, Alissa has sung on it, it sounds like Arch Enemy and our signature sound is still there.
The War Eternal album turned 10 not long ago, and that was of course such a significant album for you in terms of it marking ten years of this era of the band with Alissa as the front-person. When that milestone was passing while you were in the midst of creating this record, do you feel like that chemistry and creative relationship of that era has evolved and blossomed over those ten years?
Amott - I think so, but that first record was really special, wasn’t it? It’s always exciting in the beginning, like having a relationship. It was a lot of finding out what she could do, what we could do, what level we could bring it up to, and it felt very open of creating a new template and new way to do things. Suddenly Angela [Gossow, vocalist 2000-2014] was gone and was not fronting the band so there was a freedom of knowing we weren’t going to sound exactly the same. We already had some stuff written but it became quite adventurous and everything worked out. It sounded like Arch Enemy but a new fresh version of it. It’s like vampires, they need fresh blood. We have today having made all these albums and songs maybe opened up, because it’d all be a bit boring if they all sounded the same.
I’ve done other kinds of music, I did nine albums with Spiritual Beggars and Sharlee’s doing his The Night Flight Orchestra thing and Daniel [Erlandsson, drummer] is certainly capable of playing other styles. Arch Enemy is a metal band and we want to keep it that way, but there are still things you can do within that to create more variety and new atmospheres. Music is fun and we have a blast doing this, not worrying about that stuff.
There has been a line-up change with this album with Jeff Loomis parting ways with the band on guitars and Joey Concepcion coming on board. To touch on Jeff leaving now that Nevermore seem to be coming back too, that was an interesting era for the band of having alongside yourself another guitarist who was really well known for his own work outside of Arch Enemy. How has it changed having Joey now, who comes from a more instrumental prog background with his solo project, and what he’s bringing to the table?
Amott - It’s basically solos on the album and then playing it live of course. It’s going great with Joey because first and foremost he’s a great guitar player, a nice guy, and he fits in very well. We’ve already toured quite a bit with him last year. We went all over Asia and did a big European tour, some stuff in Latin America, so he’s been with us for a while now. He plays on the new album, we flew him into the studio for a week with us in Sweden to lay down his stuff, and he seems happy!
With these line-up changes you also look to the things that haven’t changed, and you, Daniel, and Sharlee as the core of the band have been playing together for over 25 years. How important is the stability of that relationship to you?
Amott - It’s been extremely important. I’m the founder and I guess the leader of the band but I really rely heavily on Sharlee and Daniel. They trust me and I trust them, and we have a mission and a great time doing it. Having that solid core foundation has been extremely important.
There’s a cover track Vivre Libre on the record by the band Blasphème which is not the first cover you’ve done but the first time one has appeared on the main tracklist. Why was that song so significant to make that jump to the album?
Amott - It was meant to be a bonus track. I collect metal and rock records from all over the world and always have done. I like all the obscure stuff and to dig deep. I love the French metal scene of the 80s and this was not such a well known album or band but it’s really great, and we were listening to it on the tour bus late one night and Sharlee thought we could cover this. I made a note of that as a kind of wacky bonus track for the future, but we recorded it and it turned out so well that we thought it was too good not to be on the main album. We don’t normally put cover songs on the main album but there’s a first time for everything. Alissa is singing in French on it and that’s a fun new element too.
You have big tours lined up for both the US and Europe for 2025, and Gatecreeper as the opening band on the European tour are a band who have a really strong 90s Swedish death metal flavour and worked with your old bandmate Fred Estby from Dismember and Carnage in the pre-production stages of their latest album. As someone who of course has roots in that sound going back to Carcass and before that Carnage, what are your views on the sensation of how that style seems to keep coming round and coming back through?
Amott - Some say I am an architect of it, sure. Heartwork [by Carcass] is arguably the first melodic death metal record. I think it keeps coming through again because it’s good stuff. People still talk about those records from the 90s but it’s nice that people are doing new things with it and taking it to different places. I like a lot of the bands who are playing the old school stuff, I tend to like the bands who go even more old school and playing more 70s or 80s metal because that’s the period when I was more just a fan and not a musician making records myself. I have a larger sentimental attachment maybe to those 80s vibes than the 90s vibes, but I’m just happy that real metal stays alive.
There’s so much stuff that gets called metal nowadays that I wouldn’t even put on the same tree, but that’s me, and there’s stuff out there like Gatecreeper where I can hear Dismember and Edge of Sanity in there. Next year we are going to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the band so maybe that would be a good time to get a little wacky with the setlist and put some real old stuff in there.
We got together in ‘95 but with the first album coming out in ‘96 we’re gonna have the party in 2026, and focus on Blood Dynasty for now. We did a project Black Earth touring in Japan with the 90s line-up of the band, because Arch Enemy’s first incarnation with Johan Liiva on vocals and my brother Christopher on guitar was a much bigger thing in Japan for some reason than it was anywhere else where it went largely unnoticed, and when we switched to Angela on vocals that was the only market where we had something to lose so to speak.
When we play older material live now with the current line-up, it doesn’t seem to hit the mark where people don’t know it as well maybe. Audiences change.
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Blood Dynasty, the 12th studio album from Arch Enemy arrives March 28th via Century Media Records. Order the album - HERE
Arch Enemy will head the North American Blood Dynasty Tour starting next month The trek will also include a handful of Canadian dates. The tour will also include a pair of highly-touted festival appearances with performances scheduled for Sonic Temple and Welcome to Rockville.
The tour showcases an outstanding supporting roster with Fit For An Autopsy, BAEST and Thrown Into Exile all joining the caravan.
See the complete list of dates and cities for the North American Blood Dynasty Tour below. Get tickets - HERE
ARCH ENEMY ON TOUR:
WITH FIT FOR AN AUTOPSY, BAEST, + THROWN INTO EXILE:
4/14 — San Diego, CA — The Observatory North Park
4/15 — Los Angeles, CA — The Wiltern
4/16 — San Francisco, CA — The Regency Ballroom
4/18 — Portland, OR — Roseland Theater
4/19 — Seattle, WA — Showbox SoDo
4/20 — Vancouver, BC — The Pearl
4/22 — Edmonton, AB — Union Hall
4/23 — Calgary, AB — MacEwan Hall
4/25 — Salt Lake City, UT — The Complex
4/26 — Denver, CO — Summit
4/28 — Minneapolis, MN — The Fillmore Minneapolis
4/29 — Chicago, IL — The Vic Theatre
4/30 — Detroit, MI — The Majestic Theatre
5/2 — New York, NY — Palladium Times Square
5/3 — Worcester, MA — The Palladium
5/5 — Philadelphia, PA — Theatre of The Living Arts
5/6 — Silver Spring, MD — The Fillmore Silver Spring
5/8 — Montreal, QC — L'Olympia*
5/9 — Toronto, ON — Queen Elizabeth Theatre
5/10 — Stroudsburg, PA — The Sherman Theater
5/11 — Columbus, OH — Sonic Temple**
5/13 — Charlotte, NC — The Underground***
5/15 — Daytona Beach, FL — Welcome To Rockville**
5/16 — Atlanta, GA — The Masquerade***
5/18 — Milwaukee, WI – Milwaukee Metal Fest**
*No FFAA But Featuring Martyr
**Festval Appearance
***No BAEST
