ARCH ENEMY's ALISSA WHITE-GLUZ On Pandemic-Related Restrictions: 'I Definitely Don't Think That It Was Handled Very Well'

ARCH ENEMY vocalist Alissa White-Gluz spoke to Montreal Rocks about how she ended up flying to Germany from her native Canada in 2021 to work on her band's 11th album, "Deceivers". She ended up staying in Germany for a year due to the stiff pandemic-related restrictions in her hometown of Montreal and the rest of the Great White North.

"I kind of split the two years on both sides of the Atlantic," she said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). "2020 I was west of it; 2021 I was east of it. Canada had extremely strict restrictions — so strict that at one point the police refused to enforce it because even they thought it was ridiculous.

"In general, I'm a pretty chill person and I don't really judge people on decisions that they make in times of stress because obviously nobody knows how to handle this; this is a brand new situation for everyone," she continued. "I definitely don't think that it was handled very well, but at the same time I don't know what the right way to do it would have been.

"So I definitely enjoyed 2021 more than 2020. But we were all kind of stuck in the same boat."

This past spring, White-Gluz told Metal Hammer that because of the pandemic, "Deceivers" took "a lot of travel, uncertainty and risk" to make. She explained: "2021 was a very interesting year. I had to get over to Michael [Amott, guitar] to finish vocal arrangements, then get to Denmark and record in [producer] Jacob Hansen's studios, but Canadians were banned from flying to Germany. I flew to Germany, but didn't know if I would be allowed in. There were many attempts to go somewhere else or get bandmembers to us, but they didn’t work for Covid reasons. What I ended up doing was staying in Europe for an entire year. I didn't want to risk being far away from our hub, which is basically in Sweden and Germany, and not being able to get back to it. I rented a car and found a little home for myself in southern Germany; I stayed there for a whole year. I set up a studio down there and continued working on a lot of solo material."

"Deceivers" will arrive on August 12 via Century Media Records.

In May, ARCH ENEMY released a new seven-inch single, "Sunset Over The Empire", with the title track also appearing on "Deceivers". The official music video for "Sunset Over The Empire", directed by Grupa13, was made available the same day.

ARCH ENEMY played the first show of "The North American Siege 2022" tour with BEHEMOTH and NAPALM DEATH on April 16 at The Marquee in Tempe, Arizona.

ARCH ENEMY is appearing at select summer festivals before embarking on the rescheduled "European Siege 2022" trek (with BEHEMOTH, CARCASS, UNTO OTHERS) in the fall.