ARCH ENEMY Guitarist Living His Dream

Dimitris Kontogeorgakos of MetalKaoz.com recently conducted an interview with guitarist Michael Amott of Swedish/German extreme metallers ARCH ENEMY. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

MetalKaoz.com: The new album kind of sounds a little bit more melodic than the previous one

Amott: Yeah, but to tell you the truth I really don't know. I am doing a lot of interviews and some people think it is dirtier, more aggressive and some say it is softer, more melodic. [laughs] But, this is the cool thing with music that is a subjective experience, isn't it? It is different for everybody and hopefully is a good experience for most of the fans. I think the new album has all the elements that you'd expect from an ARCH ENEMY album: the drumming, the guitar work and of course Angela's [Gossow] voice. I think we have written some really good songs and in fact we had some pretty good reactions to the new songs when we played them live in Europe. And that I think validates the fact that we are on the right track.

MetalKaoz.com: OK, so is it true that you are handling the management/booking of ARCH ENEMY?

Amott: Yes, I mean, weve been self-managed since 2008. We were with a massive company before called Sanctuary, but I think now it's much better. Angela's is in charge of the management of the band and she runs the day-to-day business and she is very involved. It's a big job, you know. But we are much happier than how we worked before. That doesn't mean anything bad about the people that we've worked before, but there is a real good feeling to be in control of your own future. We can plan our future the way we want and I think we got a bit lucky, of course, on touring around the world; we had the opportunity to play almost in every corner of the world and that's the touring advantage, of course. We just love doing it. We're much happier now. Maybe too happy to play such dark music (laughs).

MetalKaoz.com: Well, the new album took you almost four years after the previous one to be released; so, can we expect the next ARCH ENEMY album in 2015?

Amott: Hopefully a little bit earlier than 2015. This album took a while to come out because after with "Rise Of The Tyrant" we wanted to hit the road and started touring like crazy all over the place. In 2008 we separated with our management and took some time to re-structure everything and while Angela was doing that I joined with the guys from CARCASS and I don't know if you are aware of it we did reunion shows across the world in 2008 and 2009. When I was off that tour we really didn't have ARCH ENEMY material at that point, so we decided to re-record old songs and we released them in "The Root Of All Evil" album, which is basically ARCH ENEMY covering themselves but with the current lineup. Before that we released a DVD with footage taken from our live in Japan. So we had all those releases going on but no actually brand new music. Last year (2010) we realized that really wanted to write a new album but there were some special circumstances that took longer than the usual time for us. But the next album will be released eight years from now. [laughs] There won't be any record industry at all. [laughs]

MetalKaoz.com: You mentioned CARCASS actually we saw your show in Graspop, 2-3 years ago, I think. Any news from that part? Are you going to do something with CARCASS?

Amott: CARCASS is on ice now as far as I'm concerned. Daniel [Erlandsson], our drummer, is in CARCASS, too, and we are very busy now (2011) with the new ARCH ENEMY album and also we are gonna be in 2012. We have a big schedule ahead of us with ARCH ENEMY and we have to focus on that. But as far as the future goes, I don't know. I really want to find time to play with CARCASS and it's fun music to play. We don't know what will happen in the future.

MetalKaoz.com: You have mentioned the long touring plan and then again some time getting back to the studio; can this plan be tough on you and sometimes feeling a bit over-pressed by all these?

Amott: I think that we all sometimes need a break. But for me, I'm always happy when I'm playing music, guitar, creating new stuff. It's kinda what I live for, it's my dream, what I've always wanted. Before that I did jobs which were much more physically demanding, so I think I'm really happy that I achieved to come to the point where I can do this for living. So it's not too stressful for me personally. But maybe we'll take a break in 2013 because we don't want to be around all the time; people will get sick of us, man. [laughs] Also, in 2013 I don't know if we are gonna touring but we'll start to work on a new album at that point. So, you may not hearing from us at that time, but we will still working somewhere in a dark basement.

Read the entire interview from MetalKaoz.com.