Arch Enemy - Interview - 2005

“People think that because they bought a ticket to the show, that you owe them something more,” says Arch Enemy’s singer, Angela Gossow, from the comfort of the band’s luxurious tour bus. “No. You see the show and you go home. You don’t own me.”

Angela is in civvies: a short black hoody, tight black combats and massive black boots as she waits her turn to be photographed.

“Fans always wait around for hours after the shows. I’m cold, I’m wet, I’m tired; the last thing I want to do is hang around and sign things. I just want to get on the bus.”

The look on Gossow’s face suggests that she is well aware of how what she is saying sounds.

“I wake up at midday after a show and there’s already a bunch of kids outside come to find us. I have no makeup on and my hair is like out here,” she gestures with two taloned hands. “And the last thing I want is to see people. Leave. Me. Alone.”

Nature has signs that say ‘danger!’ warning us off things like puffer fish, hissing geese and red and blue poison arrow frogs. Angela is this in human form – everything about her says ‘fuck off’. You’d sooner go to hug a hooded cobra than Cologne’s own Ice Queen. Is it that surprising that the woman who has forged a reputation as a ruthless and brutal front-woman at the front of one of Sweden’s biggest extreme metal bands, is in fact quite similar to her stage persona as banshee supreme.

MH: It must be interesting seeing your band from the outside. Maybe you should all take it in turns to leave the band and watch yourselves… see what you think.

Again Angela leaps in.

“Get out,” she demands dryly with an ambiguous smile. Reluctant to ask anything more lest we get the cold shoulder pad from this metal gaunt-lette, MH gently enquires whether Angela has any ideas for future lyrics.

In a voice like Arnie’s she says “I fucking hate everybody.” Michael smiles. Angela remains deadpan. “But it’s true though.”

There is so much posturing in rock: mummy’s boys in corpse-paint, tattooed teddy-bears scowling through lip-piercings, rural white-boys dabbling in diabolism, and mollycoddled middle-class graduates ranting about being poor, downtrodden and disenfranchised. With Arch Enemy’s sinewy banshee lead singer, Angela Gossow, there is no posturing. She is just as terrifying in real life as the album artwork, music videos and live shows suggest. If not more so, because you don’t have the safe distance of televisual voyeurism when you meet Gossow in the flesh. She could lash out at anytime with that venomous tongue.

Gossow says very little, so she makes what she does say really count.

Before a conversation about the difficulties of being a couple in a band can start, Michael knocks it on the head by saying, “we don’t like each other anyway.” Angela agrees with a wide smile.

Anyone in any doubt about Angela’s misanthropy would soon be assured by her comments later on as we sit in the relatively intimate confines of the band’s luxurious tour bus.

It’s October, and Sweden is like a snowless Narnia: cold, quiet and eerie with only the suggestion of life; even here in the capital. Guitarist Michael Amott is the fawn with a knowing grin and singer Angela Gossow is the ruthless and brutal Ice Queen.

And despite the cold, we are met at the venue with a similarly frosty reception from her majesty. After reluctantly shaking our hands Angela returns to her laptop without a word. Michael however is calm, warm and genteel. Glancing round we are informed that drummer Daniel Erlandsson is being interviewed for a drum magazine, bassist Sharlee D’Angelo (ex-Mercyful Fate) and new guitarist Fredrik Åkesson are nowhere to be found.

I point out that, in interview, Michael makes references to the importance of the band’s fans.

So we leave her to it, and go in search of food (apparently the local delicacy is hot dog wrapped in mashed potato, in a sandwich. Seek and destroy).

It’s October, and Sweden is like a snowless Narnia: cold, quiet and eerie with only the suggestion of life; even here in the capital. Guitarist Michael Amott is the fawn with a knowing grin and singer Angela Gossow is the ruthless and brutal Ice Queen. And despite the cold, we are met at the venue with a similarly frosty reception from her majesty. After reluctantly shaking our hands Angela returns to her laptop without a word. Michael however is calm, warm and genteel. Glancing round we are informed that drummer Daniel Erlandsson is being interviewed for a drum magazine, bassist Sharlee D’Angelo (ex-Mercyful Fate) and new guitarist Fredrik Åkesson are nowhere to be found.

Looking into Arch Enemy from the outside is like looking into a semi-detached house and seeing a 2.4 children household with a dog and some sort of estate car in the drive. But – like most homes – when you get inside you see that all is not as it seems. To all intents and purposes Arch Enemy are riding high on a wave of successful Ozzfest shows and a subsequent Billboard 100 position for their current album, ‘Doomsday Machine’, but inside the band things are complicated: Michael’s fellow axe-man brother has left, and there is a new boy; Angela and Michael are currently a couple; and the former is increasingly anti-social.     

It’s about 4pm and the band are in various states of readiness for tonight’s Stockholm show. While a million techs and grips ready the stage, the lights and the instruments Angela is still silently engrossed in emailing friends and family. Her boyfriend and band-mate (looking like a cross between Chimaira’s Matt DeVries and Jason Newsted) Michael devotes his attention to our ‘new guitarist’ interrogation. Before their Coventry-sending blonde singer joined, Arch Enemy’s schtick was the guitar virtuoso brothers, Michael and Chris. As the remaining brother explains, for two years Chris just wasn’t that into being in the band and left in April. The kind of brotherly symbiosis that the Amotts brought to both CD and stage is hard found.

Without warning Angela speaks.    

“Well that’s fucked.”

The pair laugh, and Michael adds, “yeah, now that’s totally fucked.”

With Angela re-absorbed into cyberspace, Michael continues. 

 “I suppose there was pressure to find someone good. We have a reputation for good guitar work so it couldn’t be anyone who wasn’t great. And Fredrik is great. We’ve even been writing together already - it’s great.”

Angela gets up and walks like an extra from Full Metal Jacket to the fridge. I would not want to fight this woman. I hate losing. Asked about how it differs from working with his brother Michael admits that “it works surprisingly well. And onstage it feels more natural than I thought it would. [Heafy passes the door stripped to the waste] I thought it was going to be very different without Chris, but it’s almost better now… in a way [laughs nervously]. Chris was at the show yesterday and he said it was better as well.”

Arch Enemy are currently on their European tour with Trivium in tow, having only just returned home from the Ozzfest tour. Yesterday the band were in Gothenburg, only one of the dates in a tour that will take them right through Europe, to the Far East, Australia, and the US. Today we are in Stockholm, home of new boy, Fredriq. The venue, Klubben, is situated on the edge of an industrial estate on the outskirts of the City.

Sound-check suggests that tonight’s performance will be all that Amott promised. The two guitarists are as tight as fuck – as if they are both plugged into each other’s consciousness via the Matrix. Fredrik jams ‘Tubular Bells’ and Sharlee gives us the bass-line to The Stranglers’ ‘Peaches’, but Angela is nowhere to be seen. Sound guys are the music industry equivalent of the shoeshine boy: they know everything. So we ask him.

MH: Angela doesn’t sound check then?

Sound guy: “She never does.”

MH: Is that ok?

Sound guy: “Judge for yourself later.”

We’re not quite sure what he means by this – until later.

We sit in the canteen eating our curry (they didn’t have the sausage and mash sarnie thing) with Michael and Fredrik. The latter seems more than a little wary not to say the wrong thing.

“I’ve worked with Talisman, John Norum (Europe), Krux and Tiamat before, but I wanted to do something heavier so AE was perfect. And there’s a bunch of solos as well…” Fredrik trails off and looks at Michael.

So you’ve been writing some stuff too?

“We haven’t got that far yet…” but before he can finish, Michael quickly arrives with the right answer: “We’ve been working on a few bits.” He looks back to Fredrik who echoes, “yeah a few bits.”

Clearly Fredrik is under strict instructions not to reveal anything.

Michael has a good knack for making awkward truths feel less painful/embarrassing by making them sound like jokes, which he indicates by laughing (like Doctor Julius Hibbert from The Simpsons), for example:

“I’ve heard some of Freddy’s own stuff and it’s good. We’ll have to steal some of that [laughs].

“Having Freddy in the band has made me practise because he’s so good [laughs].”

MH: It’s good that you get on, because you spend more time with each other offstage than onstage.

“Yeah, before he joined I made some investigative phone calls [laughs]”

As the hours fly by it becomes clear that Michael is definitely at the head of this band – steering it. And in the absence of his departed brother, even more so.

Before long the meal descends into little more than free association: whether Matt Heafy shaves his navel, meeting Dio (and whether he starred in the recent shepherds pie TV ad), how beer and extreme metal don’t mix onstage and how marriage proposals were a daily treat for Angela on the Ozzfest tour, “yeah she’s still thinking about that really fat guy in a cut-off Budweiser t-shirt.”

Standing in the cramped venue’s toilets, paying no attention to Trivium’s rip-roaring set, are three genetically modified guys having a chat. Japing and pranking as if it was totally normal for three guys who resemble ex-teenage versions of Nick Nolte, Rutger Hauer and Dolph Lundgren, to be hanging out in a men's toilet like Macbeth’s witches round a cauldron.

“Hey Cinderella! Cool!” says Hauer vehemently in English less perfect than Amott’s, pointing at my Cinderella t-shirt “You are a cool guy! Man where have you come from man?” As if a dark-haired and slightly overweight Cinderella fan couldn’t possibly be a local. The conversation unsurprisingly turns to Angela.

“She sing like a man,” says the swaying Nolte look-alike, beer in hand. “But I love her.”

“Yeah, I only like the stuff with her in the band,” Hauer agrees. “We are here to see her. We love her. I want to sleep with the Enemy!” They all laugh, thrust their loins forward and grab themselves clumsily. All of this is happening while I take a pee. Dignified like.

‘Aren’t you going to check out Trivium?’ I ask, zipping up my flies.

“Who are they? Are they English band?”

Arch Enemy take to the stage after a majestic string intro from a backing tape and the crowd erupts. And here is the proof that Angela doesn’t need to sound check: her voice steam-hammers over the PA like a juggernaut with bull bars. Seeing is believing, but it still beggars belief that that voice comes from in there. God Forbid’s Byron is a 22-stone black dude, and even he can’t muster what this size 8 blonde sergeant major can. The show is mesmerizing as we are treated to extended instrumental sections, guitar and drum solos and a superlatively powerful rendition of the brand new and brilliant ‘All For One’. The show is epic. Nothing less.  

After the gig, in what appears to be a classroom behind the stage, man-mountain, Sharlee, is leafing through the Swedish newspaper, Expressen. With a current band focus that leaves little room for anyone not blonde, and a past focus that only included sibling guitarists, does Sharlee ever feel that he doesn’t get any credit or attention?  

“No.” He grins and starts to rifle back through the paper. “There is this guy who works for this newspaper, and he just loves me.”  Sharlee is genuinely baffled, as he reads from a passage more sycophantic than the Princess Diana obituary in Cosmo. “’Whether in front of 200 people or 2,000 people Sharlee is amazing…’ He is crazy. He only talks about me and what I do - I think he is in love with me.”

Sharlee is so gloriously modest. But then that’s because he can’t objectively see himself: his endearing demeanour, his masterful stagecraft and enviable command of his instrument. I never thought I’d want to hug a member of Mercyful Fate.

Angela is - unsurprisingly – nowhere to be found, but the rest of the band come together to toast another great sold out show – a proud moment for the bashful new boy who more than proved himself in his home town, and in front of his doting parents.

Arch Enemy may have a more turbulent past (and present) than they let on, but that hasn’t stopped them persevering through line-up changes and a funk of internal politics to forge a successful and ever-growing career with their signature brand of extreme yet melodic metal.

Later on that night while enjoying the hospitality of said ‘crazy’ journalist (who looks remarkably like Alex Van Halen), we are invited to sample the contents of a box full of strap-ons, spanking paddles and big rubber cocks. Luckily, that isn’t another story.

Read the follow-up interview in which Angela challenges my claims about what she said about not owing her fans anything.