ARCH ENEMY Talks Upcoming DVD, Follow-up To 'War Eternal' Album (Video)

Spark TV, which is part of the Czech monthly magazine Spark, recently conducted an interview with Swedish/ Canadian / American metallers ARCH ENEMY. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On ARCH ENEMY's upcoming DVD:

Alissa White-Gluz (vocals): "Well, just a few days ago, we played Wacken [Open Air festival in Wacken, Germany], and we filmed the entire thing to make a DVD that will come out next spring. So it's gonna be a live DVD with lots of extra material in there, just so people can experience ARCH ENEMY live, even if they haven't had a chance to come see us yet."

Michael Amott (guitar): "Yeah, I think this is the perfect album cycle to document. It's a fresh new ARCH ENEMY, and we just spent two years on the road or more, and, yeah, we just wanna put it out there kind of as a document of this time. And the show at Wacken was really special as well. We put a lot of effort into the production and had our biggest show to date. And that'll be the main part of the DVD, I guess, but there's gonna be a lot of other stuff as well, and it'll be like a live album, DVD, Blu-ray and all that stuff. We have a lot of other cool shows filmed as well, and parts of those might very well be a part of the DVD. But, you know, Wacken was just a great opportunity; it's the biggest heavy metal festival in the world."

On ARCH ENEMY's upcoming follow-up to 2014's "War Eternal" album:

Michael: "Yeah, there's plenty of ideas floating around, and there's even some simple demos and stuff like that, but we haven't really seriously gotten into the songwriting process yet. But there's a lot of ideas. But we've been spending so much time on the road, and we're not really the kind of band that writes music on the road. I mean, we might come up with a little riff idea or a melody, or something like that, or a lyrical idea, but it's easier to put it together at home when you take some specific, dedicated time to write and put together music. It's a different kind of focus that you need, I think. You wake up in a different city every day, and it's a different life, and it's a little bit hard to focus on things like that."

Jeff Loomis (guitar): "I think the writing process is gonna be awesome between us. It's just like Mike said — we really haven't had a lot of time to sit down together yet, but I think that time is gonna be coming soon."

On how Alissa comes up with lyrical ideas for her songs:

Alissa: "I kind of always write lyrics. I have a few little books full of poems and stuff like that, and even in my phone or my computer sometimes, I'll put down stuff. As soon as I have an idea, I try to just write an entire poem about it. And then, if it works, it works, and if it doesn't, it just stays in the archives and then I can always do something with it later. So I have a bunch of stuff. It just comes down to, once we actually have the instrumentation for songs, I'll see if I'm feeling those poems on those songs, and if not, then I'll write something else for it. But I always keep that part going. And definitely when it comes time to make an album, I try to be reading a lot and looking at art a lot and stuff like that, just to get ideas."

On whether she always sings about "angry" topics:

Alissa: "It's a little bit hard to be screaming about something you're super happy about. [Laughs] The music kind of sets a certain mood, and I think the words have to fit that mood. 'Cause I wanna be conveying the right message both verbally and musically, so I don't wanna be saying something that makes absolutely no sense with the music, of course. So, yeah, for me to able to really scream about something passionately, it's usually something that's not that happy."

On the expectations for ARCH ENEMY's next album:

Alissa: "I think that for all of us, with any new album, or even just with any show, it's always a challenge to do better than the last time. And I think that we all love 'War Eternal' and it's always gonna be super special to us, but we still wanna do better this time. It's just a matter of always keeping very, very high standards and being critical on yourself but in a constructive way, so that you can always produce good music and good performances. I don't think any of us are complacent when it comes to the quality of music that we've put out. I don't think we have any specific ideas in mind for things that we have to achieve within the album, but we have a really strong lineup here that's capable of putting together a really solid album. So we're all pretty excited about it… Let's not forget also that we have Jeff here for the writing process of this album, which we didn't have with 'War Eternal', so right there we have a whole new world to explore. So that's pretty exciting too."