ARCH ENEMY Guitarist Talks About Next Studio Album

Tony Antunovich of MetalEater.com recently conducted an interview with ARCH ENEMY guitarist Michael Amott. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

MetalEater.com: Can you tell me what we can expect from the next ARCH ENEMY album?

Amott: "Well, we're going to be touring a lot for this record still, so it's not that sort of imminent. But we're writing a lot of material; nothing with vocals so far and nothing with full arrangements like that. I think we've got four or five songs that are kind of put together that are like done that we're really happy with. Then there's hours of music that's just floating around; well, it's not floating around, it's actually on that kind of hard drive. We're recording on the road; we sit here and just record our ideas. Daniel (Erlandson),our drummer, is really into the engineering part of it now, so we're recording with ProTools onto his laptop and then basically he programs some drum machine and we can mess around with arrangements and all kinds of stuff. So, I can't really say what direction... I mean, it's just going all over the place right now (laughs). We've got stuff that's like that and like this and it's pretty crazy. I think it's going to be very musical, actually. We're going to try and cram in as much music as possible in one and just have everybody going off. Yeah, I think we're just going to try and be a bit more crazy. I don't know. We went a little bit more that way on 'Doomsday Machine'. I think there's a lot of cool instrumental stuff. We don't really care that much anymore. I think we've just become a bit sort of... we're not really that content with what people are going to think about it. I think we have a kind of a signature sound now in a way. We feel pretty secure. There's a lot of confidence in this band right now — musically. That's all I can come up with (laughs). I can't really tell you what it's going to be like."

MetalEater.com: You have a new DVD coming out as well.

Amott: "Yeah, we do. It's a killer DVD. We put a lot of work into it. I think it stands up against any major DVD that I've seen. I collect lots of DVDs — I have tons of music DVDs. This isn't your underground metal act putting out a DVD; this is top of the line, so… It's definitely got killer sound, it's got fantastic visuals, very high quality; the editing is perfect. It's something to be proud of. It's one of the best things we've ever done as a band, I think. It's going to be two discs. It's got some interviews on there, which is awesome so they get to know the band a little bit — some one-on-one interviews. There's also select stuff about our equipment — stuff for the gear freaks, and all our videos that we've done. We've concentrated on the sort of Angela-era, or whatever you want to call it. We've got other plans for maybe the old stuff. But that's what people know, so. We've got stuff from the 'Wages Of Sin' album on there; it's got all that. It's got stuff like 'home footage,' or whatever you want to call that stuff that we filmed. That's what people expect nowadays; I mean, that's what I expect. If you're getting a great concert DVD and there are no extras you can't... like the JUDAS PRIEST one ('Rising In The East'). I haven't seen it, but apparently it's extremely good; well-shot, sounds great, but then there are no extras on it so people give it not such a high grade. So people obviously want more so we're giving them more. So it's two discs with quite a lot of stuff on it. I think that will be pleasing to a lot of fans because it'll be our first-ever DVD, and ARCH ENEMY being quite a visual band in many ways, it will be interesting for the fans to see. It's a cool thing for the fans that have seen us live, but it's also VERY cool for the people that maybe never will see us live. We put a lot of work into our studio albums and we wanted the DVD to be at the same standard; that people can expect the highest quality sound production, just killer sound, and a good visual representation of the band. I think that's important. We put a lot of money into it. It's called 'Live Apocalypse' — very original (laughs)."

MetalEater.com: The concert portion was filmed in Britain.

Amott: "Yeah. There are two parts for the concert. The one is actually Chris' (Amott; ex-guitarist) last-ever show with the band, which gives it a bit of an historic value without us really knowing about it at the time though. It was his last performance with the band. That was a great show. That's the big one that was filmed at the Forum in London. I was a sold out show — over 2,000 plus. That's quite a long concert — lots of songs. There are three songs that we did more recently that's got Fredrik (Åkesson),our new guitar player, as well that we shot in Manchester actually. It's got three songs from the new album; it's got 'Nemesis', 'Skeleton Dance' and 'My Apocalypse'. So people will get to see some newer stuff as well — bring it up to date a bit. That turned out really cool."

Read the entire interview at MetalEater.com.