ARCH ENEMY's 'War Eternal' Cracks U.S. Top 50

"War Eternal", the new album from Swedish / American / Canadian metallers ARCH ENEMY, sold around 8,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to enter The Billboard 200 chart at position No. 44.

The band's last CD, "Khaos Legions", opened with around 6,000 units back in June 2011 to land at No. 78.

ARCH ENEMY's 2007 effort, "Rise Of The Tyrant", debuted at No. 84 with first-week U.S. sales of around 8,900 approximately 25 percent less than the opening number (12,000) of its predecessor, 2005's "Doomsday Machine" (which landed at No. 87).

"War Eternal" has registered the following first-week chart positions:

Finland: #5
Japan's Oricon chart (international artists): #7
Germany: #9
Austria: #13
Switzerland: #16
The Netherlands: #36
USA: #44
UK: #85

Comments ARCH ENEMY guitarist Michael Amott: "I am truly blown away by the fan and industry support for ARCH ENEMY and our new album.

"Seeing 'War Eternal' surpass previous efforts after what we went through last year is extremely gratifying, to say the least!

"There are too many people involved in this to thank them all for this initial success of the record. What I can say is that we know who you are!

"ARCH ENEMY is energized by the response to the new music as we continue to tour hard throughout 2014/2015. The war has just begun!"

"War Eternal" was released on June 10 in North America via Century Media Records. The cover artwork was created by Costin Chioreanu.

ARCH ENEMY played its first show with new singer Alissa White-Gluz, former vocalist of THE AGONIST, on May 23 at Turbohalle in Bucharest, Romania. Angela Gossow, who joined ARCH ENEMY in 2000 and made her debut on the now-classic "Wages Of Sin" (2001),has stepped down as frontwoman and will focus on management, while Alissa takes her place.

In a recent interview with Turk Gitar, Michael Amott stated about Angela's exit from ARCH ENEMY: "It was a sudden change for the fans; we know that. But, of course, these kind of big steps in life don't come easily, and I believe this was a gradual thing that kept growing in Angela's mind for some time.

"We had decided to take 2013 off from the road and any sort of band activity. The only thing we were doing was writing music and also there always the plan to go into the studio and record at the end of 2013. As the scheduled recording time got closer, Angela informed us last year that she would definitely be stepping down from her position in the band.

"To be honest, it was not such a huge surprise to the rest of us, as there were a lot of conversations of that nature leading up to that point. I made the changes in the band that were necessary for ARCH ENEMY to continue and keep the music alive."

Regarding Alissa's more versatile vocal approach compared to that of Gossow, Amott said: "Alissa has many different vocal styles that she can do very well… She is much more versatile in that aspect than Angela. But for ARCH ENEMY, we are sticking with the aggressive vocal style that we are known for.

"When I started the band in 1995, I had the idea to make the most heavy melodic band of all time, combining elements of extreme death metal heaviness and thrash speed alongside traditional heavy metal and hard rock influences with the harmonies, melodies and solos. We are very much staying true to these roots of the band on 'War Eternal'."

Speaking to Metal Underground, Alissa had the following to say about "War Eternal": "The circumstances surrounding the creation of this album, writing the lyrics and recording it, I'm just happy to have it finally come out. I think people are going to like it. The production quality is amazing! I always wanted an album that would sound this full. I'm a really big fan of this album, myself. Even if I weren't in the band and ARCH ENEMY put out this album, I would pick it up and say it's great. I'm really excited."

On the topic of the new album title, Alissa said: "This album ended up being a lot more personal than maybe some of my previous or Michael's previous lyrics. In the past, a topic like war or a political or global issue was what we normally wrote about. We were writing in two different bands, but we happen to have similar topics in our writing. Then when we were writing for this album, we had a collection of lyrics for this album, but we found that we were actually writing on similar things. Fighting the ongoing war in your day-to-day life, everybody has their battle going on that nobody else knows about. And then there are song titles like 'Never Forgive, Never Forget' and on and on, I think it ties in very nicely. It wasn't something we planned out, but that is the way it turned out, so it worked out really nicely. I think we really saw eye to eye and were experiencing similar things in our lives, so we ended up writing about the same topics even though we have different styles of writing lyrics."