Arch Enemy preview

Arch Enemy
House Of Blues, Chicago
Monday, May 19, 2008

Though giving an interview subject one of your demos during your talk may be shaky ground when it comes to journalistic integrity, rock critics around the world should applaud Arch Enemy vocalist Angela Gossow for proving we aren’t just a bunch of musical flunkies who settled on critiquing bands because we weren’t good enough to play in them.

Gossow landed the Arch Enemy frontwoman job — formerly a frontman job when Johan Liiva occupied it from 1996 to 2001 — by slipping one of the band’s guitar-playing Amott brothers (reports vary whether it was Michael or Christopher) video footage of her former band while she interviewed him for a Web site. Later that year when Michael, former Carcass (among others) guitarist and Arch Enemy founder and chief songwriter/decision maker, decided to dump Liiva, Gossow earned an audition on the strength of the tape and eventually got the job.

The move fascinated many metalheads (Arch Enemy released their Gossow-fronted debut, Wages Of Sin, the same year) because females fronting male bands wasn’t all that common for the genre at that point. A female fronting a death metal band was unheard of (today there are a handful of extreme acts; In This Moment and Light The City among them). She was undoubtedly the best of a very small bunch, but that didn’t necessarily make Gossow good; Wages Of Sin, 2003’s Anthems Of Rebellion, and 2005’s Doomsday Machine sometimes suffered because of her vocals, which were far too harsh to be melodic and not harsh enough for what she was trying to pull off. Last year’s Rise Of The Tyrant (Century Media) was a turning point, though. Easily the band’s best and most consistent album, Gossow finally seems comfortable. Maybe it’s because she wrote most her own lyrics (credited on every song but two); maybe the Amotts are writing more fitting material for her; maybe longtime Arch Enemy producer Fredrik Nordström learned how to coax better performances from her; or maybe she simply isn’t trying so hard to prove herself anymore. Her days of handing out demos, after all, are long gone.

Dark Tranquility, Divine Heresy, and Firewind open.

– Trevor Fisher

Click here to download Arch Enemy’s “Blood On Your Hands.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly