Anyone for ‘Doomsday’?

	Arch Enemy guitarist Michael Amott

May 20, 2006

Led by the blistering guitar work of Michael Amott and charismatic frontwoman Angela Gossow, Arch Enemy has become one of the world’s leading extreme metal bands, successfully marrying death metal with classic metal. With several U.S. tours completed in the last year, including Ozzfest 2005, the band has seen its American fanbase grow almost daily. Jeff Maki and Greg Maki of Live-Metal.net caught up with Amott at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., during Arch Enemy’s recent co-headlining tour with Chimaira.

Live-Metal: Now that Doomsday Machine has been out for nine months, are you satisfied with the album and what it’s done for the band?

Michael Amott: Absolutely, yeah. Every album’s been kind of the next level for us so far. I think it’s accomplished what we hoped it would, I guess. But we don’t really think too much about that. It’s more like you make the music and you write the songs, you’re happy with them and you put them out there and hope it’s gonna do well. Then you work your ass off and play live. We don’t have certain expectations, really. We just hope that people are gonna get into it.

Do you miss having your brother [guitarist Christopher Amott] in the band?

Both yes and no, I guess. Of course I miss him, but the last couple years he wasn’t really that into it. I guess his interest was fading a little bit, so it’s better that he’s not here.

The reason for his departure was to concentrate on studies?

He was tired of touring. We’ve been doing this for a while and I guess he wanted to try something different. He got to that point in his life where he wanted to do something different. I think he will continue doing music, though maybe not in this style.

How is the new guitarist [Fredrik Akesson] working out and where did he come from?

He’s from Stockholm, Sweden. His background is quite varied. He’s a real metal fan and a great guitar player. I didn’t really know him personally that well. I knew who he was. He was recommended to us. I met him previously a couple times, but I didn’t really stay in contact with him. But I called him up while we were on Ozzfest and got a hold of him. He was back home in Sweden and I asked him if he would be into trying out when he go back home. We had already booked more tours after Ozzfest, so we knew we had to come up with something. It’s worked out really well. He’s a great guitar player, a really laid back guy. He can play Chris’, my brother’s stuff and he also has a different style, as well. It’s gonna be interesting. We’re already writing for the next album and he’s involved in that, as well. It’s gonna be interesting to see where we take it from here.

So you’ve been writing on the road?

Yeah. We can record ideas down with laptops and that kind of stuff.

Is there a set date to go back into the studio?

There will be a new album next year, but I don’t know when. I have no idea. Sometime during 2007. Like I said, we’re gonna tour the rest of the year for this record. We have a DVD coming out in June, I believe. [EDITOR’S NOTE: An Aug. 8 release date has since been announced for Arch Enemy’s Live Apocalypse DVD.] That will hopefully keep the fans’ appetite.

Kind of like how you did the Dead Eyes See No Future EP. Are there any plans for anything else like that?

In certain markets, we’re releasing a single, I think. I think that might be only in the U.K.

How is this tour going?

This tour’s going very, very well. It’s been a great tour for us. It seems to be all about packaging a bunch of bands now and going out there and hopefully pulling in some kids. We did some headlining here ourselves in the U.S. in the fall and now we’re back again. It feels good to be back. We’re gonna do more touring for this album before we’re done over here.

Do you notice the audience growing and getting into the band more every time you come over here?

Yeah, definitely. It’s been sort of a slow build for us, I think. We haven’t had any overnight success. We’ve done a lot of touring over here, a lot of work. We noticed it’s getting a little bit bigger, which is good, I guess.

This tour is sponsored by Jagermeister. How much Jager do you think has been consumed on this tour?

I don’t know. Not very much by us, I think. I don’t really drink much of it myself. You’ve gotta play live and this tour has been intense. It’s like five shows, day off, six shows, day off, six shows again, day off. It’s kind of every night. I drink this stuff. [Holds up a bottle of water.] It’s pretty good for you.

You’ve got some shows coming up soon in Mexico. How did that come about? That doesn’t seem to happen for every band.

No, I guess not. We haven’t been there with Arch Enemy yet. We’ve had a lot of offers to go down there. I think this time it just made sense financially and we had time. Usually, we’re so busy. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. We have two shows down there. It’s gonna be great. We’re gonna fly down there from New Jersey, play those two shows and then we fly back home.

Last year, you did Ozzfest. I’ve heard lots of different reactions from different bands. How was your experience on Ozzfest?

Well, it was long, it was hot and it was boring, I guess. There was a lot of waiting around. But I’ve heard that, too. Some bands have said it didn’t really do much for their career, it didn’t do much for record sales, whatever. For us, it was the opposite. It did a lot for us. It really boosted our album sales. Our album came out one week into Ozzfest and it exploded. It was very, very strong for us. We sold a lot of CDs on the signings, as well, through FYE. We were the top selling band of the whole festival, including the main stage, as far as CDs go. It was the perfect kickstart for that record, the Doomsday record. I kind of viewed the whole Ozzfest for us as not really like a proper tour because we only played for 20 minutes. You can only really scratch the surface of what you’re about as a band. It was more like a promotional campaign. And you really reach people who wouldn’t drive downtown to see a metal show. I think they go to a couple of things a year, in the sun, drink a few beers, watch Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden or whatever and they probably get exposed to some new music, as well. I think we really reached a lot of America that we don’t usually reach.

How hard is it to get up at 9:30 in the morning to play a show?

It was weird. It’s not why you got into this business. It was a lot of work in a way, a lot of late nights because we played these off-date shows on our own or with some other package with some other bands. On a club show, they’re kind of late and they run late. You’re kind of in bed by 2 or 3 in the morning when everything’s done. You roll away from that city and you have to haul ass to the next Ozzfest and set the alarm for 9 o’clock in the morning or whatever. You didn’t get much sleep really. There were a lot of naps taken in the afternoon. And it’s so hot, as well. The American summer killed me. I’m a very white person. I don’t really take to the sun that well. It was pretty brutal.

You’ve played Ozzfest and a lot of other festivals and the clubs. What type of venue do you prefer?

I like a medium-sized club really the best, I guess, just for playing and for getting a good sound. If it’s a good quality venue and a great PA and a good sound on stage, that’s really when I get the ultimate feeling for playing, when I can really get into it personally. But then you play these big festivals, like Ozzfest or in Europe we play these really huge ones – like we’re doing this summer with Metallica and Guns N’ Roses, Korn, bands like that – and even if you play at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, it’s people all the way to the horizon. It’s just insane, a ton of people. Those are great because you’re reaching so many people and you get off on that energy, but then maybe the sound sucks on stage. It’s a really huge stage and there are a lot of dead spots where the sound isn’t that great. From a musical point of view, from a performer’s point of view, I prefer places like tonight.

Have you played here before?

No.

Obviously, your band is getting pretty big in the metal scene, but it seems like Angela is the one on all the magazine covers and she’s the band member you always hear the most about. How does that affect the rest of the band?

When you have a lead singer, that’s kind of usually how it goes. We have Bruce Dickinson on the covers or with In Flames you have Anders on the cover – he’s kind of recognizable with his dreadlocks and the rest of the guys aren’t that recognizable. And Angela’s kind of interesting. It’s the paradox of she looks the way she does and does what she does vocally. I think that paradox is interesting to people. To us, we don’t really think about it. She’s just in the band and she’s the singer of our band. We don’t really think, “Oh my god. I can’t believe she’s doing what she’s doing. She’s amazing.” None of us think about that. But we know that people get into it because of that. I think what we always wanted was a strong frontperson. With our old singer, our original singer, who was a guy [Johan Liiva] – we made a couple of records early on when we first started out – people were more interested in me and my brother, the guitar playing. People would be watching me playing a solo and watching Chris, but they wouldn’t really look at the singer that much. He didn’t really project any real strong charisma. I think that’s really what every band needs to really break through. Even the more alternative bands like Tool, they have a strong frontperson. I think people need to focus onto that. I think that’s what makes our band interesting, as well. It’s definitely different and different is good. And that attracts attention, I guess, both negative and positive. A lot of people will never get into Arch Enemy because we have Angela on vocals, because she’s a female. A lot of people can’t handle that. But it’s been mostly positive, I think, more positive than we actually thought. When we first enlisted Angela and got her in the band, I thought it was gonna be more negative than positive. So it wasn’t like we were thinking, “We’re sitting on something dynamite here. It’s gonna explode.” We were kinda thinking more, “Maybe we’re fucking up our little bitty career that we have.” I thought people would have a more not-so-open view. There’s no tradition of bands that are as good as Arch Enemy musically having a female singer, like a world-class extreme metal band of the highest quality having a female singer. There weren’t any examples of that that have happened before. There have been a few things but maybe more in the nu-metal-type direction, but none of them have really been that successful. Like I said, it’s been small steps every time for us. But now we’ve grown to – I guess we’re a decent size now. I don’t know, difficult to say. We have a big name, I think. Most people know who we are now, maybe, in the metal scene anyway.

What do you think about the metal scene today?

In America? America’s very different from the rest of the world. America’s like its own isolated place. It seems like it’s coming back here, but a lot of what’s being called metal isn’t really metal to my ears. But it’s metal to the kids. You’ve got emo-type bands that incorporate metal elements into the music. A lot of the new music I’m hearing is kind of metal-influenced, I’d say, but it’s not really metal. Metal is something – it’s a feeling and you’ve gotta live it and I’m a sad sop because I’ve been living it for 20 years. It’s my life. It’s the soundtrack to my life, growing up as a teenager with Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Exodus, all that kind of stuff, even the older stuff, like Saxon, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath. That’s my life. I’ve lived a lot of my life through that music. So I don’t get off on some bands that are around today because I can’t really hear the metal in it. But it’s so third generation now. They’re influenced maybe by bands like In Flames, which, to me, they’re a good band, but it’s not something that would influence me. I know those guys, but it’s weird to hear bands copying people that I know personally. I guess people are copying Arch Enemy, as well. But I don’t really hear as many obvious Arch Enemy copy bands. I think it’s maybe because what we do is a little bit harder to incorporate than what – you can’t just play guitar for a couple years and then do what we do, whereas playing some simple harmonized guitar lines like Iron Maiden or In Flames style, you can kind of get off trying to emulate that a little bit. But I think that the stuff we do maybe is a bit harder to emulate, although I have noticed some bands doing it.

There are a lot of American bands borrowing and taking from the Swedish bands. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I’ve been quoted and people took it as a negative when I said that. I think it was obviously a very well publicized interview ‘cause I did an interview on Ozzfest and there were a lot of bands there ripping off the Swedish sound or whatever you want to call it. I guess you can call it the Scandinavian metal sound. It just seems like everybody is doing it and not doing it very well but being very successful at it. I don’t want it to come out as vicious because I’m not. In my opinion, I think it’s cool that some bands are getting huge playing kind-of metal, like Slipknot is kind of a hybrid band, isn’t it? But it’s a gateway drug if young kids hear that and they get accustomed to the screaming vocals, because they probably listened to Green Day before that. Then they get used to that and then they hear something like Arch Enemy and they go, “This sounds pretty cool.” But if they only go from Green Day to Arch Enemy, they’ll go, “What the fuck is this? It’s terrible.” They can’t get their heads around it. So I think it’s very positive. I think it’s very exciting that there’s an arena-sized extreme metal band like Slipknot. It’s good for everybody … What do I think about America? They kind of lack originality. You’ve got the screaming, the good cop/bad cop vocals, you know the “[singing] I’m falling through you, [growls].” It’s just so bad. I think it’s terrible, like some of the worst music I’ve ever heard. And the three random word bands. But it’s a trend. In America, it doesn’t seem organic. There probably were a few originators of that style, but then suddenly it’s like everybody is into that. They might have been playing something else, but now it’s like, “We’ve gotta get in on this because this is where it’s at. Let’s add a third word to our band name and get out there and do it.” It’s a bit overwhelming, the lack of originality. So I’m totally not interested. But you know what? I’m not the target audience for that either. The target audience is 15, 16, 17 years old.

I’m guessing we’re not going to hear clean vocals in Arch Enemy any time soon.

Well, it just seems to be the ultimate sort of cheese factor now, I think. When I hear it now, it just drives me nuts. That’s a reason why I really respect a band like Lamb of God. They’re certainly huge and they’re just relentless. They never let up. It never goes into these gay parts. I like that. I like a band like Pantera. They had clean vocals, but Phil Anselmo in his day was a fucking amazing singer. I love clean vocals. I’m a big classic metal fan. I love Ronnie James Dio. People like that are some of my favorite vocalists, the more classic metal singers, like Rob Halford of Judas Priest. Those people are gods, but they can really sing. Then when you’ve got some of these tiny-little-boy-type voices, college-type voices or whatever, it’s like screaming and singing, it just sounds so bad. It just sounds very terrible. It’s just very un-musical. I think it’s cool to just stick with the harsh vocal attack for now. Our whole concept for Arch Enemy is to have an extreme, almost death metal vibe but then to have classic metal guitar work. A lot of the things that we do songwriting-wise are more derived from classic metal, ‘80s metal. It’s kind of a hybrid. Clean vocals? It would have be to some really good clean vocals. I’m not that great. There’s Devin Townsend who can do all kinds of voices. He’s amazing and he can sing really cool clean, melodic vocal lines, but they sound fucking cool.

Who are some of the guitarists that have influenced you?

Growing up, it was definitely the guys from Metallica, Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, people like that. I still respect their rhythm guitar work. People like Dave Mustaine. I was way into the thrash thing. I was a thrash kid. That’s all I was listening to, Slayer and that kind of stuff. That’s what I learned playing guitar with, playing along with those kind of records. Then, also, I grew up with a lot of classic metal, like Iron Maiden and trying to learn to play “The Trooper,” Saxon – all these kind of bands that people don’t like great today but that were big at that time in Europe. Also, I like stuff by Michael Schenker, UFO, MSG, that kind of stuff. Classic hard rock, metal – I know people think that’s really boring music today, but that’s kind of what I grew up on. And then thrash came along. Then it turned into some kind of speed metal. Then it was thrash and death and I was part of all that. I guess, really, when death metal came, that’s when I really started playing in bands myself. But it was amazing last night. We played the [New England Metal & Hardcore Festival] and Exodus played. And when we were playing, Gary Holt from Exodus and the other guitar player were standing at the side of the stage and digging what we were doing. So that’s kind of like wow. And Kerry King, who we know now, he came out to a couple of shows on the west coast and we were hanging out with him afterwards and he played us some new Slayer stuff that was fresh from the studio. Those kind of things are exciting. I’m in a weird place because a lot of people consider me to be – there’s a lot of fans of what I do and I have fans who really worship what I do. That’s an amazing feeling, but at the same time, I feel like I’m a fan of these other people. So I’m somewhere in between. I know what it’s like to be a fan and at the same time, I’m being worshipped by kids that are coming up now. It’s kind of weird. It’s a good place, though. I’m well grounded. I don’t get carried away. I know what it’s like to be nervous when you meet somebody.

Talking about the old thrash and death metal, would there ever be any chance of a Carcass reunion?

There’s nothing discussed and those guys have kind of moved away from this music, where I’m the retard. I’m still doing this. I’m still growling and playing ridiculous guitar parts for a living. They kind of moved on and did different things. I have a hard time visualizing that. I can’t really see it. I can’t really see us on a stage together.

I wouldn’t want Arch Enemy to break up or anything for a Carcass reunion.

No and I love playing with these guys. These guys are some of the best players in the business. It would be hard to just give that up. I would do a Carcass reunion if it was done right and if it was done for maybe a tour only. It would have to be soon before everybody dies.

So I guess you didn’t have any involvement in Jeff [Walker]’s solo album coming out [Welcome to Carcass Country], the country-metal album or whatever it is?

He’s got a very twisted mind, so I’m very interested to hear it. But from what I hear, it’s not metal. I’m just happy that he’s getting back out there. He’s actually playing bass now for a band called Brujeria. I think Jeff Walker, he’s a very talented person. He has a very talented way with words and artwork ideas. He’s a very creative person. I always thought it was weird that he didn’t do more music after Carcass. I always thought he was a very creative person. But it’s cool that he’s getting back into it. As for a Carcass reunion, I don’t know. Do you think people would be excited by that?

Well I know Heartwork is probably one of my favorite—

Yeah, I was talking to Gary Holt from Exodus yesterday and he was like, “We were way into Heartwork when that came out.” We had no idea that Exodus, kind of an established band that we grew up listening to – it was unthinkable that they would be into what we were doing. I think afterwards it’s become bigger than what it was at the time.

I think what you guys did then is what all these bands are trying to do now.

Yeah. It’s weird. I was part of that, so I can’t really have an objective point of view. It was just something that happened at the time.