I love the last few Arch Enemy albums and I’m excited to hear this new one. I don’t have any cover art for the album as of yet, but the track listing is as follows:

RISE OF THE TYRANT
Blood On Your Hands
The Last Enemy
I Will Live Again
In This Shallow Grave
Revolution Begins
Rise Of The Tyrant
The Day You Died
Intermezzo Liberté
Night Falls Fast
The Great Darkness
Vultures

In related news, Christopher Amott has returned to Arch Enemy after a 2 year break. Christopher was an original member of the band, but decided to take a vacation from Arch Enemy in 2005 after recording Doomsday Machine. He took some personal time for himself, saw the world and now he is back to slay some more metal.

Christopher’s brother and band mate Michael Amott comments on Christopher’s return to the band:

“So, we are back with my brother Christopher on guitar—it’s a huge rush to have him back playing in his signature style. He’s jumped in at the end of the songwriting process for the new album and added some of his unique spice. I feel Christopher’s playing has matured and is more precise and even faster than before! Guitar fans are going to freak out at the stuff we’re up to on the new album!”

This has me so much more pumped for this new album. I am pretty sure it is going to rule all of life.

Arch Enemy has already set some dates for the album tour with more to come. No Calgary date on this tour yet, but I’m holding out for some updates.

I went with a buddy of mine and we arrived after the first band. We got there just in time to watch them setup for God Forbid. They were pretty good for the most part. They had a really rad singer, but their sound setup wasn’t the greatest. You couldn’t hear the guitars over the bass and most of the backup vocals were pretty off key.

The second band up was Chimaira, their sound setup was really quick and very good. All the instruments were really clear. I think they even upped the volume on the lead guitar during the solos so that it was more audible. The lead guitarist was pretty good. He didn’t do a lot of picking shredding, but he definitely had his tapping down. In each solo he had a tapping riff that included tapping and picking and no less than 3- note fretting patterns which I thought was pretty impressive.

Arch Enemy took at least 45 minutes to setup. It looked like they were having a problem with either Michael Amott’s head or something with the bassist’s setup. Finally they got it going and the band came out. For some reason I expected the lead singer Angela Gossow to be really macho and butch, but she was actually pretty feminine (as much as a female metal singer can be). She was pretty playful and looked genuinely happy to be playing Calgary. It was pretty sweet to see them in such a small venue. We were standing at the back of the room but still had a full view of the whole show.

I don’t know many Arch Enemy songs by name, so I couldn’t tell you every song they played, but the few I know that were in the set are Nemesis, We Will Rise, Anthems (instrumental) and Burning Angel. I thought they did a wicked job on Nemesis. It isn’t one of my favorite songs, but it sounded much better played live.

All in all Chimaira was sweet, but I don’t know if I’d make a special trip to see them. Arch Enemy was rad and I would go see them in any capacity, whether it’s a show they are headlining like this one or even if they were just opening.

I have attached a few videos of Arch Enemy to this post below. This first one is actually one from the show that I was at. Someone recorded it and posted it on YouTube.

And then here are some random ones I have found from other shows and stuff.