Intervista Arch Enemy (Tutta la band)
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Let’s start with your new album, “Will To Power”; while with “War Eternal” Alissa had just joined the band, with this new one both she and Jeff Loomis have been in the band for a few year. How was the process of songwriting?
Michael Ammott: it was pretty much the same, it started in Sweden with…of course it was a little bit different, every album is a little bit different, but basically it’s the same since we started the band.
Is it hard writing music and rehearsing with Alissa living in Montreal, Jeff in the States and the others in Sweden?
MA: Yeah, that’s obviously not easy, teleportation is still not affordable.
But we make it work, Alissa was in Sweden for about a month recording vocals, she wasn’t only recording, we also had time to, you know, talk everything through and get out the ideas we had already talked about via email or on the phone.
And how did the works in the studio go? How much time did you spent there?
MA: That’s a really good question, I don’t even know, it’s really hard to define.
Daniel Erlandsson: Yeah, it’s really spread out, we started recording drums, it took a week, and then…
MA: And then we had a long break.
DE: We had a long break.
MA: We went on tour [laughs] then we…we just built it piece by piece, it’s not like…it’s not like it was in the old days, you book a month in the studio, you start with the drums, we had access to a lot of studios, but we did it in Sweden.
When was the first moment you went into the studio?
MA: That’s a secret [laughs] no, that’s actually September last year [laughs] that’s a while ago.
Has the presence of Loomis, a highly technical guitarist, influenced the direction of the album?
MA: Well, he plays a very impressive guitar, so…
A peculiarity of the album is the presence of a ballad, “Reason to Believe”; a ballad for a Death Metal band could be a controversial decision, how did you came out with this song?
MA: Well, the song just happened organically really, it was written and when it was written it was sitting there for a while, actually, and we were like “Should we try to go with this?”.
We did an instrumental demo, then I wrote the lyrics later on, but, you know, it’s definitely a step in a different direction, something that I wanted to do for a long time though .
I always thought it would make us a more complete Metal band if we could have those…if we could go into that area as well like all the big classics, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, they all have some kinds of ballads.
So you started with the precise goal of writing a ballad, it not like you started writing something that turned into a ballad.
Well, no, I mean, it was a ballad from the get-go.
With the promo I didn’t get the lyrics so I’d like to ask you, can you tell me what are the lyrics about?
Alissa: Yes, I wish the journalists had gotten the lyrics but I didn’t realize nobody got them, actually.
Yeah, like on “War Eternal” Michael wrote half the lyrics and I wrote the other half, pretty much, I think for both of us, we have pretty different styles, and I think it’s pretty obvious who wrote what [laughs] you know, my lyrics tend to be very epic and anthemic, and I feel mine are more chaotic and longer with more words in the song but, yeah, we sort of take them in a sort of case by case basis.
For me, personally, for this album I didn’t sit down and go like, “I want to write a song about politics and then about this…” you know, I didn’t do that, I just listened to the music and whatever mood the music put me in, that was my starting point.
That way I think it fits with it, because it would be kinda weird for me as a singer if I had a really fast chaotic song and I was writing about something really sad; I’d need to write about something that pumps me up, or at least that get me railed up about something if it’s gonna go on a really fast song.
So that’s usually how I start with the lyrics.
This is a question for both you, Alissa, and for the rest of the band separately: after 14 years with Angela Gossow in the band, was it hard for you to adapt to a new singer, and for you to join a band with such a long history with their previous singer?
MA: It was…I don’t want to say it was super-easy, because of course you’re getting to know a new person, we knew her a little bit but not that well, and then we ended up in this situation when we were writing an album with a new person and getting to know her, and getting to know each other at the same time.
She was getting to know the dynamics of Arch Enemy and we were getting to know her vibe, her personality…but, you know, it clicked really quickly, I have to say, so I wouldn’t say it was difficult, but I wouldn’t say it was…well, it was instantaneous that her voice was going to fit well with our music, and then it was a matter of…
I remember we talked about this when we promoted our last album, a few years ago, we flew over so we could spend some initial time so we could… I didn’t want to skip steps, I wanted to jam in the rehearsal room so we could have her sing on some old songs, you know, it was the early days so we wanted to see how we played together, every singer is different, you never know if one is going to blend well, but she sounded killer.
Then another step was we wrote a few songs together with her while she was in Sweden, she wrote the lyrics then we went to this small studio and we recorded them.
So we had these different steps and then we just went from there, the rest is history [laughs].
Then we hit the road, 300 shows, we hit it pretty hard and now we know each other too well [everybody laughs].
Looking back I think it was pretty easy, it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be; the first time she came over we played a few songs, then Alissa went to the bathroom and we said “Yeah, she’s pretty okay” [laughs] I thought we would have had to explain a lot of things to her, but it never was like this.
It really helped that she was very familiar with our music and she said “Let’s play that one, let’s play that other one”.
It felt really good and from that point we knew it was going to work, it was like “Okay, okay, we may have a future” [laughs].
Alissa: Yeah, I think that, for me anyway, it felt very natural.
Even when Angela called me and told me, “I want you to replace me” I was surprised, but I was somehow not THAT surprised, for some reason [laughs].
You know, Angela and I are very similar as people and even within the band we are pretty similar in terms of how we view things in the world, opinions about things, which I think helps.
But I think maybe the most difficult thing was that both Arch Enemy as a band and me individually, we were both in situations where we were like, “The thing we’ve been working on for our entire lives could disappear in an instant” kinda thing, we were both basically stranded for a second, but we needed each other [laughs].
I’m not good at everything, but if there’s a strength that I’m proud of, that I worked on since elementary school is that I pay close attention to things and I do things 100% and that’s been good for me as a singer because I really love singing, I love writing music, I love performing music, I love doing that and that’s made me very adaptable.
I could do a song with Tarja, I could do one with Caliban or I can get on stage with Kamelot and do a completely different style of music and feel happy and comfortable doing that too, and I’ve also did so many guest appearances on other band’s CDs or just like hopping on stage with them with no rehearsal, barely knowing the words, you know, I jumped on stage at a festival with Testament and…you know, I’ve done so many things like that and for me being in a room, or a band, or a stage with people who are making music that they love automatically makes me feel at home and I feel like, “Okay, now what am I gonna bring to this?, I’m gonna work this and I’m gonna inject my personality, my musical vision into it”.
So I think that has allowed me to…like, I didn’t know Kamelot before I started touring with them either, but I just was in the tour bus and now we were gonna do hundreds of shows together.
It just takes a certain level of professionalism with any band, but once you’ve seen that in a band it makes pretty easy to work with them, I think.
So, yeah, it was pretty…easy, pretty natural.
As with your previous band you played smaller avenues and smaller tours, were you ever worried of playing the kind of gigs that Arch Enemy play?
No, you know, I feel like I’m made for the big stage [laughs].
It’s like a turtle in an aquarium, as big as the aquarium gets that’s how big the turtle will get [laughs] you know, if you put him in a small tank he’s gonna stay this big, but [everybody laughs].
If I have a huge stage I’m gonna use the whole stage, and I think our genres of music is made for arenas, is made for lots of people to hear and sing along to and, to be honest, I’ve done a fair amount of very big shows with Kamelot anyway, ‘cause they’re a rather large band also so…yeah, that didn’t intimidate me at all.
Jeff, I’ve seen Arch Enemy twice, at Wacken 2014 and at Metaldays 2015, and of course the biggest difference between the two shows was your presence.
Even though you hadn’t been in Arch Enemy for a very long time you seemed a really tight band, so my question is, did you click right away with the band?
Jeff Loomis: I think so, I think I did.
I was really fortunate to have Daniel who sent me some tapes, not tapes, some…guitar stuff so I was able to learn it very fast, I was able to pick all the harmony stuff and all that.
I’ve got a pretty good ear anyway, so I was able to pick up on the songs and learn them pretty quickly, it took me a few weeks, but I hopped on tour with the band almost immediately, so I didn’t have a lot of time to really prepare but, first couple of shows where a little bit shaky for me, but I think I got into it pretty quickly.
But, I mean, I’m genuinely a fan of Arch Enemy, so there’s a lot of songs that I’ve heard many times already…
So you already knew them.
JL: I kinda knew the vibe of them, but I had to go over them a little bit more to learn them a bit more accurately.
In the latest years the term “female-fronted band” is being used more and more frequently, how do you feel about it?
MA: Well, you never say “male-fronted”, do you?
We don’t really think about that at all, we had Angela in the band for over 10 years, for us is just a person, we are all human beings.
Davide Sciaky