I spoke with Gossow about how the album came together, some highlights of their summer festival season and upcoming tour plans, the effect Arch Enemy’s music has had on fans, and many other topics.
Chad Bowar: How did the idea for re-recording old material for The Root Of All Evil come about?
Angela Gossow: It came down to our fans, who have been asking us about it for a while. People that are aware of the older recordings are curious to hear what they would sound like with the new Arch Enemy, and others want us to start playing some of those songs live. A lot of our young fans don’t know anything about these older recordings. The first one was 13 years ago, and some of them aren’t much older than that. Kids tend to pick up what’s around now. When you get older you start to look back into a band’s older catalog. We hope to make old and young fans happy, and play the old songs live again.
How did you decide on which songs to re-record, and were there any arguments?
We don’t argue in this band to begin with, and we wouldn’t argue about a choice of songs. When you listen to the albums it was quite obvious which were the strongest tracks and which would work the best live. We picked out tracks that we can imagine playing live. That was criteria number one. There are some tracks that sound great on a recording, but don’t get the vibe across live. And we have played some of these tunes live. We pretty much knew which ones we wanted to pick.
Did you produce the CD yourselves?
Yes. It was mostly Daniel. He is our ProTools guy, our technical geek. He does a lot of home recording for himself. He actually recorded himself on drums, which was quite amazing. When I did vocals, Michael did the engineering. Chris recorded bass and the other guitar. Everybody was involved. It’s so easy nowadays to run a basic recording program. But when it comes to mixing and mastering, you have to give it to someone else, because it takes a bit more skill.
The songs of course were already written for this album, but did your recording process take the same amount of time as a usual album, or was it quicker?
It was a lot quicker. When you record a new album, you have a very self-critical period. You record most of it, look at the material and think it’s crap, and then want to start from scratch. We had none of those crisis moments, no therapy sessions, no crying. (laughs)
When you recorded the vocals, did you try to be faithful to the original style, or put your own spin on them?
I’ve played quite a few of them live before, and there are obviously places where the lyrics have to be, a certain rhythm. I didn’t copy Johan, because he had a very different vocal style than I have. He has a different pitch, and he likes to do a lot of free floating stuff, ignoring the rhythmic pattern. But he does it in a way that it sounds cool. But I’m too German. When I ignore the pattern, I sound awful.
Which song was the most challenging for you vocally?
I have no feeling for anything that is in between beats, for example on “Silverwing” or “Beast Of Man,” which I have to count out, even on stage. I have to use my head, instead of my soul and heart. It’s a bit less enjoyable. Off-beat songs are the most difficult.
Arch Enemy has been on a two year timetable between studio albums. Does mean the next CD of original stuff won’t be until 2011, or will it be sooner?
People have said we are releasing too much stuff. There have been a lot of reissues and a best of. They say we have something coming out every six months. The label would like to see the band giving birth to a new baby every 8 months. But we are looking at going into the studio in the autumn of 2010 and maybe releasing it in the spring of 2011. That seems like a relaxed schedule to us. We’ve got a lot of material. We’ve been writing since 2007, but we don’t want to release too much in a short time, because people get really tired of it.
You’re getting ready to tour in Russia and China. Have you been to China before?
Yes, we were at the end of 2007. It is very different. There were uniformed military with machine guns inside the venue, which I’m not used to. People were very disciplined in the beginning, for the first couple of songs. We were a bit nervous. It’s intimidating to look into a machine gun and not know how far you can go, and how cool the Chinese officials are with that type of self-expression at a metal show. Then at the end they broke down the barriers and moshed in the front. I didn’t know how the uniformed men would react, but they just stepped aside and everything was cool. It’s a different vibe there.
CDs aren’t commercially available in China, but fans still manage to get them. Did you find the audience knew the words to your songs?
Absolutely. They can’t access our website or YouTube because it’s blocked by the government. We are blacklisted, I guess because our name is Arch Enemy and we have a song called “Revolution Begins.” We actually had to submit the lyrics before we went over there. The government checks them. We of course didn’t submit “Revolution Begins.” (laughs) Everybody knew the lyrics. It was amazing. They have ways to get the music. The bootleg market is huge in China.
