Arch Enemy - War Eternal

Published June 04 2014

*=Staff's pick	Tempore Nihil Sanat (Prelude In F Minor) Never Forgive, Never Forget* War Eternal* As The Pages Burn No More Regrets You Will Know My Name Graveyard Of Dreams Stolen Life Time Is Black* On And On Avalanche Down To Nothing Not Long For This World

Genre	Heavy Metal/Melodic Death Metal	Alissa White-Gluz	Vocals
Tracks	13	Michael Amott	Guitar
Running time	48 Min.	Nick Cordle	Guitar
Label	Century Media	Sharlee D'Angelo	Bass
Release	09 June 2014	Daniel Erlandsson	Drums
Country	Sweden/USA/Canada	-	Keyboard
Producer	Michael Amott/Arch Enemy
Similar artists	---

I haven't listened to Arch Enemy for a very long time, but when the singer swap from Angela Gossow to Alissa White-Gluz became official earlier this year, I felt an urge to check out what the band has accomplished with its new release War Eternal. Alissa sings okay, but I also feel that there's a slight piece of crushing power missing. Her performance is absolutely not poor and I won't even bother to compare it to Angela's efforts, but some of the music's great content ends up hidden behind a voice that mainly wheezes itself through the songs.

I personally think that it's a bit of shame that Arch Enemy chooses vocalists with this type of voice, because the band's music equals highly powerful heavy metal, with influences of thrash and death metal, and the songs would, in my opinion of course, have turned out even more attractive and captivating with a regular metal singer, whose input, in a perfect world, had lifted this material to a higher and more glorious dimension.

Elegant guitar parts stream almost all throughout the record to combine the brutal impression with melodic moments. It's quite easy to be deceived by this music and to believe that it's more brutal than it actually is. By experience, I am familiar with tons of people that label music only by listening to what the singer achieves. The total production is high-powered to me and I like the album's approach, which feels like it's coming straight at you like a ton of bricks. All in all, I enjoy this release and its energetic appearance, and therefore hand out 7 chalices.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	6	8	6	7

Summary
7 chalices of 10 - Tobbe