Arch Enemy's Angela Gossow

Wed 7th Oct, 2009 in Features

Melodic death metallers Arch Enemy are set to embark on a headline tour of Australia this month – their fourth visit to the land down under, with old school death metallers Suffocation and relative newcomers Winds of Plague in tow. The band’s German vocalist Angela Gossow – friendly, polite, chatty and not at all what one might expect from her fearsome on stage persona – phones in from the band’s home base in Sweden to talk about the tour.

The Australian shows are after a series of dates in places that perhaps don’t get to see many metal bands – among them Taiwan, the Philippines, Korea, China, and Indonesia. It’s a hard slog for the band – Gossow laments that they don’t get to stay in holiday resorts – but they are happy to be able to reach fans in far flung places. “These are obviously very exotic places to go to and I think a lot of bands don’t dare – you have to be able to make compromises.”

It seems that fans in Asia have the internet to thank. “That’s the positive thing about downloading,” says Gossow. “We’re not against that anymore.” And with the focus shifting from CD sales? “What we get out of it is that everyone gets to know Arch Enemy, it doesn’t matter if they bought the CD or downloaded it from the internet, right. You can’t buy Arch Enemy CDs in Korea or China, but you can check it out on the internet, which is why we can actually go there and 1000 people will come to the show. Borderless music – I think it’s really cool.”

Arch Enemy’s eighth studio album, The Root Of All Evil, has just been released. The album contains new versions of selected songs from the band’s first three releases, which were originally recorded with former vocalist Johan Liiva. During the recording process, Gossow had to find her own voice on the old songs.

“It’s my take on the originals. Which are… just kind of written differently to the new Arch Enemy material. So yeah, it’s kind of a challenge, but it was more fun I think than a challenge. I like to sing the old stuff and obviously had to go with the music, and with the placing of the vocals in the music, I couldn’t really find my own spots in there, and I couldn’t really change it. The old singer had a different style, the verses, the chorus line… yeah interesting. It was an interesting experiment.”

One track that made it into the final cut was the appropriately named Diva Satanica, a song that never appeared on any of the band’s first three albums, although it did appear as a bonus track on limited editions of both Stigmata and Burning Bridges.

“I was kind of looking forward to that one,” laughs Gossow, revealing it was an oft-requested song. “It’s obviously more of an Angela song than a Johan Liiva song, I think. Fans in Japan and South America, they’re fascinated with the song title and they kept calling me Diva Satanica. So yeah, that was definitely fun, to do that song and make it my song and sing it from a female point of view, which is definitely a different interpretation to when a guy sings it. I’m kind of proud to be Diva Satanica!”

Re-recording old material is a bold move for any band – there are always going to be fans who are against any kind of modification of the original versions. In recent interviews, the band has had to defend their decision – journalists asking if Liiva knew what was being done and if he objected. Given that Liiva’s tenure spanned only four years and three albums, while Gossow’s is now four albums and nine years, she finds the questions amusing.

“It’s the typical thing, being the – œnew’ member in the band, and quite funny because I think by now, I’ve succeeded him in terms of actually being a member of the band. He was obviously the first one on … but I’m in the defining Arch Enemy line up. But it’s true that some people think they can question it.”

The artwork for the new release was not done by Niklas Sundin, who the band has worked with for at least their last three albums – but simply because he wasn’t available to do it. “That’s sometimes a good thing,” suggests Gossow. “You kind of get cosy working with the same people all the time. Niklas is excellent, he’s a real artist and he’s a good friend of ours as well. He’s in a band called Dark Tranquillity as well, so it’s all very Swedish. But he wasn’t available so we had to look for someone else.”

The new artist is Brazilian Gustavo Sazes. “We met Gustavo in Brazil actually, when we played there. And we know that he’s done work for Firewind and other bands that we know – it’s all a small scene when you look around. But even though we were familiar with his artwork, it’s cool because it’s such a different album, it’s not another new Arch Enemy studio album, but it’s actually a special album for us as well, so it was cool to try somebody else out and he did a really cool job. It looks kinda old school metal, and that’s what we wanted for the artwork.”

Although the new album is made up old material, Arch Enemy never did a headline tour of Australia for their previous effort, 2007’s Rise of the Tyrant – meaning the band has a lot to fit in their set list.

“We did the Black Crusade [with Machine Head and Trivium which was part of a big line up and we only played 30 minutes, so it’s not the same. There’s a lot of songs we haven’t played from Rise of the Tyrant yet, and then obviously from The Root of All Evil too. We’ve got some things in mind with the tour package, and with Suffocation being a very old extreme metal band as well. It’s gonna be very exciting.”

The story of how the Gossow joined Arch Enemy is somewhat of an interesting one. Working in and studying marketing, the singer gave guitarist Christopher Amott a demo tape of one of her bands in her capacity as an amateur journalist, hoping to snag a support slot. Instead, Michael Amott rang and asked her to audition for the role of vocalist.

The fairytale nearly ended a short while later, however, after she was diagnosed with throat nodules, a condition caused by incorrect technique, just before heading off on a tour of Japan. Gossow explains that the problem was she never learnt to sing properly.

“With traditional singing, that’s when you learn to know your voice from a more natural and kind way. I got into music with metal so instead of the more gentle way to get into singing, I just started screaming. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Fortunately, however, the damage wasn’t permanent. ”[The nodules] go away when you leave your vocal chords alone. It’s like hitting your knee, it gets a bit swollen right? And when you leave it alone the swelling goes down. That’s kind of what I had.”

As a result, Gossow become first a student, and then a proponent of screaming technique – and is even presenting a workshop at the first Heavy Metal and Gender Congress in Cologne. “I’m quite surprised actually that I didn’t have worse damage. To continue as a professional singer I had to work my way back to how and where I started, to try and find out what I was doing wrong. Get a few singing lessons before you start screaming, because it will save you a lot of time and trauma I think.”

Since working with Gossow, Arch Enemy have been a hell of a lot better marketed than a lot of extreme metal bands are, with a regularly updated web site and MySpace page, an official eBay store, and online promo videos for each tour. Gossow admits this is her influence at work, drawing on her years working in marketing.

“There’s a mountain of information out there, you just have to know where to put it so that the right people will read it. When I started listening to metal I was 15 and there were only fan sites and a few magazines – when I found out that a band was coming to town to play a show it had usually already happened, or had already sold out by the time I got there.”

On the flipside, she explains that people also forget you very fast. “What you have to do is actually give something to people… there must be some real value. So I write updates, and blogs, and write about the tours and my experiences. It’s a great tool but it actually takes a lot of time and dedication. But I put into it because I think it’s a cool opportunity… people can connect and be part of the band in that way.”

Although it’s a topic that’s been done to death, it’s hard not to talk to the most successful woman in extreme music and not turn to the issue of gender eventually – in particular, the number of women involved in extreme metal.

“It’s been changing violently for the last five years and I think that’s why it’s become such an interesting issue… because it was predominantly men in metal, very few women, for many years, and a different outlook on feminine role models as well. The – œ80s were completely different… lots of women washing cars in videos, you know, and this has obviously changed. The number of women in the audience and the number of women in bands has changed dramatically as well.”

It’s a topic that Gossow has revisited many times. “When I joined Arch Enemy there was a big outcry… holy shit, you know, how can a woman be fronting this extreme metal band?” Over time, however, especially as she has proved herself, this has changed. “There’s a lot of women in extreme metal bands now, and I think it just shows how society changes in general … the same goes for business and politics and all over the place, changing.”

Gossow believes the key is to play down the gender issue and focus on the band. “Me, I’m not having such an issue with it, because I’ve never really made it an issue for Arch Enemy … we always presented me as a member in the band – we are a very modern band, in that way. The press likes to focus on sexuality and we’ve really fought that off. And I think that’s why people like us. Cos yeah, I’m a woman, I’m one of the most successful women in extreme metal, but I’ve never really made it an issue. I’ve always stressed it – let’s talk about Arch Enemy, let’s talk about the new album, let’s talk about the songs, let’s talk about the tour that’s coming up. Let’s not talk about me being a different gender. I think that’s why people are quite fascinated with us, still.”

Gossow is not impressed with female-fronted metal bands who play up on the sexy calendar shots angle. “I don’t support that. I think it’s very annoying. That’s why we never do these – œhottest chicks in metal’ tours. We’ve been approached by a lot of bands that also have women in them, and I’m really sorry about that, but we have to say – œno thank you’ because right now, the press does not know how to deal with that, and they will put us in a corner that we don’t want to be in. We don’t want to be a chick metal band. We’ve never really been perceived that way, it’s always been about Michael Amott and Christopher Amott, and Daniel on drums and Angela on vocals. It’s the band approach, and we’ve never let the focus sit on me alone. And we wanna keep it that way! We really wanna keep out of the whole chick metal thing. We see it as boring and outdated, almost. You can sell any kind of product with a pair of tits attached.”

With nine albums under their belts, the band seems to be almost constantly touring. Gossow is not sure if she can see herself on stage at 50, 60 or even 70, like mainstays Lemmy Kilmeister or the members of Girlschool.

“As a musician it’s hard to think about the future because you can only do that kind of music, that kind of style, as long as it’s in your heart, and you’re 100% behind it. It’s not really going through the motions, it’s not about routine. It’s an extreme lifestyle, an extreme style of music, and it takes a lot of you, and it depends how much you really want to do this, be an active musician. I don’t know if I want to do this at 50. But if I’m up for it, if I’ve got the drive of Lemmy or the girls in Girlschool… I’m probably going to do it.”

Extreme metal also has quite a large physical toll. “I’m a very healthy person so probably from a physical point of view, I might still be able to do it when I’m 60. But I’m not really sure … it’s a young thing as well, if I want to do this when I’m 60 or if i just want to take it easy. Smoke weed and listen to Morbid Angel. It seems to be a good prospect! [laughs] Listening to music, just enjoying it.”

Gossow also has an obligatory final message for Arch Enemy’s Aussie fans. “Come to the show! Drag your corpse out of the house and come to see the show and have a great time with us, because we are totally excited and it’s gonna be a fantastic show.”

Arch Enemy dates:
Nov 1st – Capitol, Perth*, 18+
Nov 3rd – Fowlers Live, Adelaide*, Lic/ AA
Nov 5th – The Forum, Melbourne, 18+
Nov 6th – The Roundhouse, Sydney, Lic/ AA
Nov 7th – The Hifi, Brisbane, 18+

*Arch Enemy and Suffocation Only