ARCH ENEMY: WAR ETERNAL (2014)
1) Tempore Nihil Sanat; 2)
Never Forgive, Never Forget; 3) War Eternal; 4) As The Pages Burn; 5) No More
Regrets; 6) You Will Know My Name; 7) Graveyard Of Dreams; 8) Stolen Life; 9)
Time Is Black; 10) On And On; 11) Avalanche; 12) Down To Nothing; 13) Not Long
For This World.
As our favorite pop pranksters, the Mael
brothers of Sparks, once said, "Just like everything else in this world, time
wreaks havoc on every girl. What do you do? Throw her away and get a new
one!" Now I have no idea whether Michael Amott is a big Sparks fan, but he
took the Maels' advice quite seriously. In the light of Arch Enemy's continuing
descent into stagnation, Angela Gossow announced her departure from the band (apparently,
an amicable one, as she stayed on as their business manager), and welcomed her
replacement — Alissa White-Gluz (what a name!), former lead vocalist of The
Agonist, up to now Canada's chief competition for Arch Enemy, but apparently no
longer so.
With all due respect to Ms. Gossow and her
decade with the band, this was a good
decision, and not simply for reasons of physical health (growling does take its
toll even among professionals), but also because, well, no offense intended,
growling only takes you that far in
your life: Wages Of Sin was a fun
ride, but we'd learned everything we needed to know about Angela Gossow on that
album and we really haven't learned anything new ever since — at a certain point,
in this sort of genre, the singer ceases to be a personality and becomes a generic,
predictable piece of paraphernalia, merely accompanying the different riffs
and solos.
The catch is that the replacement would have to
be worthy of the predecessor, and it is not every day that a growler of Angela
Gossow caliber comes along. But as much as I am skeptical of the profession in
the first place (and who wouldn't be?), White-Gluz turns out to be God's
unexpectedly generous gift to this band. Where Gossow's growling was almost
genuinely scary in its cartoonish cackling taken to the extremest of extremes,
this Alissa gal approaches the task in a similar, but different manner — I'd
probably define her growling voice as just a tad «sharper» than Gossow's, and
more distinct, to the point where you can occasionally even make out some of
the actual words she is «singing». She seems to have a drop of the punk spirit
in her, too (not surprisingly, she is said to be in a relationship with Doyle
of The Misfits), and there is a «pissed-off / violent» flavor to her growling,
rather than the «infernal / doomsday» attitude of Gossow, which can help take it
more seriously than usual.
Most importantly, though, the introduction of
White-Gluz helps rekindle the band's collective spirit as well. I certainly
cannot vouch that with War Eternal,
Amott and Co. have given us the finest collection of riffs and
classically-influenced melodic passages in 5, 7, or 10 years, since the melodic
basis behind Arch Enemy's work has always been so similar (to say the least). But
every once in a while, you'd have yourself an album that sounded «fresher» — Wages Of Sin being the most obvious
example — and War Eternal, despite
having the same superficial features as any Arch Enemy album, also has that «new-beginning»
look to it, and not just because of a new singer, but also because the new
singer triggers a new desire to excel in what they do.
That desire does not translate (at least, not
upon my initial attempts to discover them) into writing any exceptional, «where-the-hell-have-you-been-all-my-life»
bits of riffage, but the band's overall melodic drive seems to have improved,
with a large number of symphonic themes interwoven among the brutal
sledgehammering, including no less than three atmospheric interludes, the last
of which, ʽNot Long For This Worldʼ, provides the album's most memorable and
stylishly «heavy requiem»-like theme, building up crescendo-style and then
fading out with a ghostly piano coda that, gratifyingly, leaves no hope whatsoever
for the doomed humanity. The synthesizer tone responsible for those symphonic
elements is certainly cheesier than if they'd thought of adding real strings
(ʽAvalancheʼ is a good example), but at least it supplies some variety.
Still, the band is really at the top of their
game only when they are at their speediest, their angriest here — which is
where Alissa's infuriated vocals really connect, and you get not too memorable
melodically, but quite impressive stylistically tunes like ʽNever Forgive,
Never Forgetʼ (give it a better set of riffs and it would not be out of place
on an Iron Maiden album) or ʽAs The Pages Burnʼ. When they slow down, the whole
thing occasionally starts dragging, but even there you have things like the
title track, which is like... like a Foreigner arena-rocker derailed and turned
into a death metal anthem. Yes, it's actually hilarious when you think about it
this way.
Fans of White-Gluz' past karma have dared to complain
that she is not given an opportunity to use her clean vocals on the record
(other than a tiny bit of background overdubs on ʽAvalancheʼ), but this may not
have necessarily been due to the band's stubborn conservatism, but rather to
the fact that much, if not most, of the songs were written with a «growling»
delivery in mind before the lineup change — a hypothesis that will be tested once
the band returns to the studio once again. In the meantime, I am about as
heavily excited by War Eternal as I
could find myself excited about a present-day «melodic death metal» album written
and executed in strict accordance with the genre's Procrustean formula. And
that translates to a mild thumbs up, even though far be it from me to
recommend spending too much time on a
record like this, or on modern heavy metal in general, for that matter.
"give it a better set of riffs and it would not be out of place on an Iron Maiden album"
ReplyDeleteOof - and I have never been impressed by any Iron Maiden riff ..... Judas Priest wrote better ones before 1983 and Metallica after. You likely meant it as a compliment, but to me this sounds as disapproval.
"or on modern heavy metal in general, for that matter."
ReplyDeleteWhich makes me wonder: are there any metal bands left with clean vocalists? Good ones, I mean, who understand the importance of a good riff? Opeth only uses clean vocals in their ballads and they are not particularly good compared to the classics.
The only band I know is Alestorm, who delivered exactly one good album (Captain Morgan) plus a few good songs on Black Sails at Midnight. They ran out of good riffs pretty fast.