![]() “I thought, ‘Great opportunity’ – why not play our music in front of 10,000 people a night instead of 1,000? – but I didn’t think it was going to go down that well. Michael says he initially wasn’t sure whether the tour would be time well spent. In 2015, Arch Enemy had the chance to play some of the largest rooms of their career when Nightwish – another act that continues to prosper despite two vocalist changes, and for whom Alissa sang with during one show in 2012 – invited the band to open their month-long European arena tour, which concluded at Wembley. It’s a strange feeling being in the spotlight like that, but I’m coming to realise that that’s a lot of what the fun is – having control over the energy in a room.” That’s what happens onstage, but times 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 – however many people are in the room. ![]() It’s almost like if you’re walking down the sidewalk and you see a stranger and you smile, and then they smile back. I fucked up – move on.’ When I do that, I can feel myself sending good energy out and then receiving it back. So, what then? “I don’t let that happen,” she says. “If I go onstage and my sound is off, or I’m not feeling well, or something messes up, and I let that get in my head and I start having a bad show, I can tell that the audience feels my negativity radiating out.” ![]() “I think it was my tour manager who said it once: ‘You have to understand, your face could start a war or end it.’ I never thought about it that way, but it’s totally true,” she says. Yet despite having so many shows with the band already under her belt, Alissa says she’s still evolving as a performer. The band performed more than 300 shows around the world in support of 2014’s War Eternal, and if they continue at their current pace, they’ll do even more in support of Will To Power. With Alissa, however, Arch Enemy have scaled new heights. We fall in love with a band and want it to stay like that forever, no matter what it takes.” “I’m an old-school metalhead, and old-school metalheads don’t like change. “I was really afraid of change,” he admits. When Angela told her bandmates that she wanted to step down, Michael was initially unsure whether they should continue. “It was a nice level to be on, but we kind of felt that, ‘Well, maybe this is it – we’re not going to get any bigger.’” “We were just cruising at a certain level,” he explains. He goes on to say that after the band’s final two albums with Angela, 2007’s Rise Of The Tyrant and 2011’s Khaos Legions, it seemed to him as if Arch Enemy had “plateaued”. I think we were getting stale there for a while, even though we didn’t want to see that at the time.” She and Angela share some similarities, which was great to have it somewhat consistent – but it’s also different, and I think it was different at the right moment. “She’s a great singer, a great performer. “People were always saying in the beginning that it’s big shoes to fill, but I started saying that she brought her own shoes,” he says. When asked about Alissa’s impact on Arch Enemy, Michael is quick to offer praise. Anchored by the band’s longtime rhythm section of Sharlee D’Angelo (bass) and Daniel Erlandssson (drums), Michael and lead guitarist Jeff Loomis – who just celebrated his three-year anniversary with the band – deliver a Gatling gun-like barrage of memorable riffs and blazing solos, while Alissa stalks the stage and bangs her head with purpose. As the enthusiastic response to tonight’s blistering 15-song, 75-minute set proves, there’s plenty of good to focus on at the moment.
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