Jan. 27, 2010 - Issue #745: AGA

Arch Enemy: Reborn

Metal band gives new life to old songs

Maybe it's just the type of people who make a living creating hard, punishing music, or the tough, no compromise esthetic that permeates through the metal crowd, but metal acts seem to burn through band members at a much higher rate than other genres—including vocalists, the departure of which often leaves a trail of songs that seem unapproachable to new fans, and missed by long-term listeners.

That's where Swedish death metal band Arch Enemy found itself at the start of the decade, after the departure of original vocalist Johan Liiva. While vocalist Angela Gossow's been fronting them ever since—it seems hardly fair to call her a "new" member, as she's been with the band since 2001—there was some old material that just didn't quite work in the live setting, yet it still held merit with the band and fans.

"We got a lot of requests from the fans who wanted to hear them live, those songs," explains guitarist Christopher Amott. "Old songs that had followed us from those earlier albums. Well, those albums were kind of lost; when we played the old stuff live, the new fans didn't really know what was up."

Arch Enemy's solution was choosing the best material from its first three (Liiva) albums and re-recording them with Gossow on vocals. The resulting collection, The Root of All Evil, gives new fans a chance to devour older songs as presented by the current lineup.

With older material now re-introduced into the Arch Enemy live catalogue, thoughts of writing brand new material for a post-tour release are starting to simmer—in addition to the next Arch Enemy release, Amott mentions a solo disc of his own on the horizon, a mellower, genre-hopping collection called Follow Your Heart—and Arch Enemy's looking to craft its next album at a studio of its own.

"We're gonna build our own studio," Amott says. "Where we live, where we rehearse, we're gonna build a studio. So we're gonna do a lot of the tracking there; our drummer is really into recording, and we're pretty good at it, all of us. We don't want to dish out the money for a big studio anymore." V

Wed, Feb 3 (7 pm)
Arch Enemy
With Exodus, Arsis, Mutiny Within
Edmonton Event Centre, $35

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