ARCH ENEMY Bassist: 'The Promotional Campaign For This Album Has Been Unbelievable'

Chad Bowar of About Heavy Metal recently conducted an interview with ARCH ENEMY bassist Sharlee D'Angelo. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

About Heavy Metal: How are things going on the Black Tyranny Tour [with MACHINE HEAD, THROWDOWN and SANCTITY]?

Sharlee D'Angelo: "It's awesome. It's a really good package. It's a package that represents many different aspects of metal, and people seem to dig it. It's diverse. Things are going great, and all the bands hang out. We have lots of time together."

About Heavy Metal: After the U.S. tour you're headed to Japan, Australia, Europe and China. Was it difficult to set up shows in a country like China?

Sharlee D'Angelo: "It dropped in our laps. We had been talking to people all over the world, and an offer came to us. It fit perfectly because we had a little bit of time between Japan and Australia. It's a golden opportunity to go somewhere we haven't been before. I've never been to China, so it's going to be a treat to go there and see what it's like."

About Heavy Metal: Is ARCH ENEMY's music available in China?

Sharlee D'Angelo: "On the pirate market, yes. I don't think many bands actually sell a lot of albums there. It's mainly imports and downloads and bootleg CDs. The bootleg market is huge there. I'm wildly intrigued to see what the Chinese metal scene is actually like. I don't know anybody that's been there, so I have no idea what to expect. It will be very interesting."

About Heavy Metal: How is it having Christopher Amott back in the band for this album?

Sharlee D'Angelo: "It's great. It's good having him back, because it's like a piece that's been missing. He's been there from the beginning, and he is an integral part of the sound. It feels like we're back together. He hasn't missed an album, he just missed about two years worth of touring. For him, having the time off and living a normal life was a bit of a shock to his system. During that two years we've become a very well-oiled machine. He's been great with it. He enjoys things now that he didn't enjoy before he left. There were things he would get annoyed with or tired of, and those are the things that he gets excited about now. That's given us a vitamin injection as well."

About Heavy Metal: What has the response been so far to "Rise Of The Tyrant"?

Sharlee D'Angelo: "Only good things. The promotional campaign for this album has been unbelievable. We've been doing a lot of photo shoots and interviews, which is a really good thing. It shows that there's so much interest in it. People seem to be blown away by it. We love it. We think it's a fantastic album, but you never know if anybody else is going to like it. It can happen at any point. Next album people could turn their backs on you. You never know. From a fan's point of view, we posted one song on our website, and the first few festivals we did in England and Germany, that was the song that got the best response. People already knew the words to it. It was amazing."

About Heavy Metal: You brought back producer Fredrik Nordström, who also produced ARCH ENEMY's first four albums. How come?

Sharlee D'Angelo: "We were thinking about who we wanted to use as a producer, and we heard some of the stuff he had done lately. We thought it sounded pretty good and wanted to give him a try again. It worked out perfectly. It was great. It's a messy and in-your-face sound, but you can still hear things. I don't know how to describe it. It's got that really fat bottom end going. He did a great job."

About Heavy Metal: Do you think this album was Angela's best vocal performance?

Sharlee D'Angelo: "I think it is. The cool thing about her is that she works on her voice all the time and comes up with new things. It's like a guitar player that practices all the time and comes up with new techniques. That's what she does with her voice. She's been working by herself and with vocal coach Melissa Cross. She practices every day when she's home and comes up with new ways of singing. This one is a bit more up front and very naked. On 'Doomsday Machine' a lot of it is double tracked and there are several voices at once. This one is more straight-forward. She just went in and sang the songs the whole way through. It went by very quickly. We spent weeks on the vocals for 'Doomsday Machine', but maybe just a few days for 'Rise Of The Tyrant'. I think it came out great. For the first time I think you can hear that it's a woman singing, not a man."

About Heavy Metal: Where did the title "Rise Of The Tyrant" come from?

Sharlee D'Angelo: "I think it was about mid-recording. It was one of the songs, and Angela came up with the lyrics for it. We thought it was a really good metal title. It also works as a theme. This isn't a concept album by any means, but it is a theme that is running through a few songs. It captures the whole spirit, both lyrically and musically. We adopted that for the title of the album."

Read the entire interview at this location.