Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 5 weeks ago
Michael Amott and Daniel Erlandsson of melodic death metal giants Arch Enemy sit down with Metal Hammer to discuss the classic metal bands that shaped their sound. Discover their top five picks, from doom metal pioneers to power metal heroes.
Transcript
00:00That's always something I think we all aspire to, is to have a lot of longevity in me.
00:04Arch Enemy, we're coming up for 30 years of Arch Enemy, so it's us, you know, we're hanging in there,
00:10you know.
00:15We can start with an American band called Trouble.
00:19Yeah.
00:19That's been a big influence on us.
00:22Yeah, people probably wouldn't necessarily think of them as an influence on us,
00:26if people know Trouble and think of Arch Enemy,
00:28but a lot of the note choices and the riff styles and some of the heavier groovy riffs have a
00:35bit of a trouble in us.
00:38Early on, I was really into the Dune stuff.
00:42There weren't that many bands, and then it was like St. Vitus, Trouble,
00:47then Candlemas came along in Sweden, which was massive for me.
00:52And then now, of course, then it became a lot more of that.
00:56And that whole genre has, of course, a little stone, a rock, and then all kinds of things that happen
01:02after that.
01:04But yeah, Trouble has always been a band that we've all enjoyed in the band, everybody.
01:08Bands that we've picked are not really the most obvious ones, because, you know, we've also loved Motorhead, Slayer, and
01:14Metallica,
01:15you know, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, you know, all that stuff is like a staple, of course, for Arch Enemy.
01:21But we've been digging a little bit deeper on this one.
01:24And one band is an American palm metal band from the 80s called Vicious Rumors.
01:30And they're often overlooked, I think.
01:32I think there's a riffing style there and the way they do their harmonies and combine speed and melody.
01:40And just the riffs.
01:41Basically, the riffs are insane in that band.
01:44And there's a couple of records that they did for Atlantic records, I think in the early 90s,
01:49the self-titled one, and then the one called Welcome to the Ball.
01:52And those have influenced us a lot.
01:54I think we were talking about Scorpions.
01:56Oh, yeah.
01:59Well, that's a band that's inspired us a lot over the years.
02:03Maybe not the most obvious thing that people would expect, like the power ballads and stuff like that.
02:08But that too, actually.
02:10The picking parts.
02:11Yeah.
02:11I think we just love how they put a song together with a very simple chord, simple melody.
02:18A great lyric.
02:20And they create magic with very few ingredients in a way.
02:26And I think we like that approach.
02:28They also have really good heavy rock stuff.
02:31And there's one of those bands I think they've been doing for like 50 years plus, right?
02:34So they have a lot of psychedelic hard rock to the groovy 80s stuff.
02:42And then they've got other things over there.
02:44And they've got ballads and rockers, you know?
02:46And so that's...
02:48I like how they're not only one sound, you know?
02:52They can rock hard and they can also do soft things.
02:55And both sounds are accepted by their families.
02:58So that's pretty cool.
02:59And those kind of bands, you realize the songs they have, the catalog of songs is just incredible in them.
03:05And that's always something I think we all aspire to, is to have a lot of longevity.
03:09And Arch Enemy, we're coming up for 30 years of Arch Enemy, so you know?
03:14We're hanging in there, you know?
03:16Hopefully we'll have that same kind of trajectory.
03:18It's one of those things that gets more and more difficult to put together a set list for the live
03:23show.
03:23Because we have a lot of songs to choose from now.
03:26The new album is the 12th album, you know?
03:28Yeah, but imagine for Scorpions, it's gonna be really difficult.
03:31So, yeah, Merciful Fate.
03:34This is obviously a very dark, you know, occult, heavy metal sound, you know?
03:38With a mixture of the 70s sound coming into the 80s.
03:43Really inventive, cool riffs.
03:46Lots of interesting guitar parts, drum parts.
03:50And of course, King Diamond's vocals that are just soaring on top.
03:53You know, all different kinds of styles.
03:57And, you know, his voices are just insane on those.
04:00Yeah.
04:00I think Don't Break The Owls.
04:02Belles and Don't Break The Owls.
04:03And of course, the first EP.
04:05Something that's influenced us a lot of as a group.
04:09It's pretty unique music in a way.
04:11Yeah.
04:11You know, it's like they created something that I think is impossible to recreate.
04:16Like, it's just a kind of magic that happened in the studio, I guess.
04:20And yeah, for the time, yeah.
04:21I mean, and they're just one of, they have that style, you know?
04:24So, you know, we'll have like, oh, this is our Slayer.
04:27This is, you know, what we're writing our songs.
04:29This is Slayer part.
04:30And then we go like this muscle fade riff.
04:32So it's, we know what we're talking about when we have that internal dialogue about,
04:39you know, the new song.
04:40So they're definitely there for something.
04:41Yeah.
04:42Another band we discussed actually was a death metal band called Morbid Angel from the States.
04:48And they're another one with this really crazy, this is where Trey has this really warped,
04:55almost backwards sounding riff style.
04:57And that accommodation with the drumming and then David Vincent's vocal and everything was like,
05:04had a big impact on us.
05:06I mean, we didn't know each other at the time when we got into them.
05:08But that was one of the touching stones that we have.
05:12Yeah.
05:13And obviously Pete Sandoval's drumming.
05:17Yeah.
05:17He's, they've all, they've all become like legends now.
05:21Yeah.
05:21We recently saw, what's it called?
05:25Iron Morbid, the new project, when they do the old Morbid Angel stuff and it was just killer.
05:30Yeah.
05:31Really good.
05:40We'll see you next time.
Comments

Recommended