Arch Enemy: Spreading Black Wings

We’re living in weird times. Wars are being waged, politicians are pleading the fifth, and pandemics are still stalling our lives. You can cover your ears and shut your eyes, but you can’t outrun the world’s rot. No matter how hard they tried, melodic death metal titans ARCH ENEMY couldn’t keep out a global pandemic and the world’s politics – it’s seeped into every nook and cranny new album Deceivers offers.

“As much as I don’t want this to be our COVID album, it kind of is; I think in the lyrics its crept in a little bit,” explains guitarist and bandleader Michael Amott as he tucks into chunks of chocolate somewhere in London. “We’ve never made a concept album, but there seems to be a thread of deceit and betrayal; of people not really showing who they really are, you know, people wearing masks and not really showing who they are and don’t have your best interest at heart.”

Deceivers’ wades in deep water that often deals out waves that hit too close to home. Whether they’re looking at it interpersonally or globally, the lyrics that leapt off the page and onto records for Amott and vocalist Alissa White-Gluz came with consequences.

“I wrote the lyrics for Sunset Of The Empire, and when I wrote the line ‘revolution is a mere change of masks‘ it just felt like that,” he adds, pausing to reflect. “And now we have a war in Europe, and I wish those lyrics weren’t as timely as they are.”

Inspiration is a double-edged sword for ARCH ENEMY – completed by bassist Sharlee D’Angelo, drummer Daniel Erlandsson, and guitarist Jeff Loomis – that they’ve dealt with for 27 years and 11 albums. Whilst the world around them seeps into the music, the music helps them escape the horrors of reality, too.

“I think we found a lot of shelter in the music, which was the great thing about having this album project. It saved me mentally because I had something to focus on, when there’s so much negativity in the world, so much uncertainty and division,” Amott sighs before his frown turns upside down as negatives become positives. “It was nice, I just shrugged that off for a long time and focused on the music and having something to do gave us a meaning to everything, we were just hoping we’d get to realise it one day. So, now I’m in London, and nobody’s wearing a mask; it’s beautiful.”

Whilst Amott is happy to have normality back, having just returned from a North American tour with BEHEMOTH, NAPALM DEATH, and UNTO OTHERS, making Deceivers during the height of the pandemic broke them out of a career-long trance.

“I’ve always been on a tour, album, tour, album, tour, album cycle since we became established, since we got on that treadmill; it’s like a wheel and you get into this cycle and there’s always these deadlines, because we have a tour already booked and sometimes you wish you could be back and finetune something, and I’ve always had this secret dream that I could have as much time as I want to create my masterpiece,” he laughs, about to pull the rug from under his own punchline. “Now I had that time, and I don’t want to have that again because I got too much into it. When you have the opportunity to go back to it four months later and go ‘you know what, I want to redo that guitar solo, or change that, or bring down the vocals here and lift up these keyboards’, it became this thing of us having nothing better to do than go back and mess with it all the time.”

Contrary to his own beliefs, messing with the mixes so much has paid off. Deceivers is definitive ARCH ENEMY, an album that polishes off their melodic death metal mastery yet pushes the boat out once more, experimenting with glittering synths and classical strings.

Aside from redefining what it means to sound like ARCH ENEMY once more, Spreading Black Wings sees the band tread new paths lyrically, including a nod to someone Amott holds dear. “I’ve never written a song about Satan, and I thought I’d be fun to do that. I found it interesting how he was originally an angel in heaven, and started his own deal down in Hell, but then it’s also about being an atheist” he explains, before quietly pausing to reflect. “I put in the line ‘do not fear to tread the left hand path’, Left Hand Path was the first album from ENTOMBED and their singer, my good friend, LG [Petrov] passed away during the time we were putting the album together, so I thought it was a nice tribute to him and in the album credits the song is dedicated to his memory.”

When it comes to paying it back, ARCH ENEMY are just as comfortable paying it forward. Poisoned Arrow’s cello comes direct from a fan, who entered a competition for one thing and won something out of this world. It turns out that that’s exactly what Amott thought of this talented listener.

“During the pandemic, we were coming up with content for our social media, so we thought why not organise a competition where we pick some winners from people playing our songs. There were just beautiful piano players, and a lot of guitar and vocal covers, and then this guy on cello did a killer version of The World Is Yours and it was so tight and so precise, he really had it, his tone was impeccable. And then a few months later, I thought why don’t we ask that guy so I sent him a DM on Instagram and said ‘do you want to play on the record?’ and that’s kind of like an extra bonus for him, and for us, that’s a win-win.”

Of course, ARCH ENEMY aren’t making albums just to hand out prizes and pay tribute to passing friends. They’re creating bodies of work that stand the test of time, that allow them to tour the world, and continue doing what they’ve done for nearly three decades. And at the end of the day, all Amott hopes for is that you’ll take the time to sit and listen. “I am fully aware that people’s listening habits have changed a lot, but at the core of my heart I am very much an album person. We think about that a lot, and we try to create balanced albums with peaks and valleys, light and shade, and all these different emotions so that you can listen to a full album without it being too much of one thing, it’s just this journey.”

“I took it very seriously; I’ve become a bit of a maniac when I make records. I compose most of the music, and half of the lyrics, so for me it’s a very personal thing. I’ve become quite intense, maybe more now than other times because there’s other things going on in the world that made everything a bit more serious somehow”

For ARCH ENEMY, as perfectionists and musical polymaths, all they’re hoping for after 27 years and 11 albums is that we’re all still listening to their creations, to their journeys. “At the end of the day, we just want to be where people listen to music, but I think Deceivers is a really great piece to listen to as a whole, and I just hope some people take the time to do that in this day and age.”

Deceivers is out now via Century Media Records.

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