Interview with Metal Band Arch Enemy

while it may be unique it’s no gimmick
this Swedish melodic death metal band is
fronted by a woman and is all the more
aggressive for it hi my name is
stephanie and welcome to watchmojo.com
and today was speaking to michael amite
founding member of arch enemy
many fans hate being classified and yet
there seems to be hundreds of subgenres
of metal do you think this adds or takes
away from the whole experience and how
would you label arch enemy which is call
you know heavy music or extreme metal
I’ll say with some kind of extreme metal
but people can call it whatever they
want you know I don’t really care what
people call it good music is good music
you know as far as I’m concerned
where
when arch enemy first began I know that
you were writing a lot of the songs and
you are also playing even the bass
guitar at some point some people were
considering the debut album as sort of a
solo project so now would you guys say
you’re more of a collaborative effort
it’s definitely more of collaborating
going on right now and has been for a
long time yeah I mean this is such a
great lineup that we have now we’ve had
the same lineup since way to the sin
which we recorded in two thousand so ten
years now everybody brings different
stuff I mean just that the fader they
bring their musicianship and their
skills to the band affects the sound I
think I mean I might have a the skeleton
of a song and I present that to them but
the way everybody adds to it makes it
sound like arch enemy the end
and in two thousand you’re saying a lot
of things had changed for example you
switched from Johan Oliva to angela
gossow and so what would you say she
added to the band like the dynamic of
your music just a whole different stage
presence different vocals and it also
attract a lot of interest in the band
people it was something new something
fresh in a genre that’s you know usually
seen as more male dominant do you find
that having a lead female vocalist
presents challenges to arch enemy or
were you able to use these perhaps as
advantages a lot of people have told us
you know retrospect I was so smart of
you to get a female singer and it really
helped you guys but wasn’t like that at
all we just found someone who did the
job really well and that was it and we
didn’t really consider the gender issue
that much
you’re once voted the best guitarist in
the whole world so does hype hinder or
help your career young those kind of
readers poles and stuff out there great
you know i mean it’s it’s great you can
really feel the fan support guitar
playing is kind of a i feel it’s very
subjective i might like a guitar player
and then somebody else it doesn’t like
though putting at all of course you can
measure who’s the fastest and stuff that
I but that’s not really within the
musical realm I field
in terms of the twin guitar sound that
you like you know you can really tell
the two distinct personalities in your
music so what exactly are you trying to
achieve one of the things idea is behind
the band that I wanted to do when I
started the band was to have the
extremity of sort of death metal in the
vocal and drumming but then also have
sort of quality guitar parts more
traditional from heavy metal and hard
rock occurs now we just do without
thinking about it you know we sort of
had a concept the band when we started
but then you don’t really think about
that I see you go through the albums and
years of touring its interests will you
do interviews you get asked a lot of
questions about stuff that I never
really think about music for me is just
purely instinct I don’t leave can I
don’t really see us a lot about it
thank you so much oh thank you