Full disclosure, Arch Enemy is on a long list of bands that I jammed the heck out of when I was in high school, and have not revisited since, as my tastes have changed in later decades. In particular, Arch Enemy lost a severe amount of stock when they traded vocalist and female extreme metal vocal trailblazer Angela Gossow for The Agonist’s Alissa White-Gluz on War Eternal. I gave War Eternal a passing listen and completely skipped over Will to Power. When provided with their latest work, Deceivers, I approached the listen with trepidation but willingness to be proved wrong about past biases.
Deceivers starts off as strong as can be expected in modern melodeath cycles. “Handshake With Hell” is aggressive and catchy in equal measure. The track features an extended clean vocal passage, which while providing a fun counterfoil to the usual growls and screams we are used to in the genre, also seems to be a card cashed in way too early on the record, and would have been better served right around the time where listener fatigue is setting in past the halfway point. The title track “Deceiver, Deceiver” relies more on fast-paced chugs overlayed with the usual Arch Enemy fare of slow-to-mid paced melodic phrases. Throughways in the song, we get a pre-chorus and chorus section that is so shamelessly lifted from “Nemesis” and “We Will Rise” (one of the standout Arch Enemy tracks of the Gossow era), and already the cracks are beginning to show. Thankfully, this title track does feature a blistering but short solo and leans further into the faster-paced aggressiveness of the overall track.
It’s only song three and by “In the Eye of the Storm”, Arch Enemy is already running out of ideas. Creatively bland verse sections and stereotypical drumming and vocals are quickly reminding me why melodic death is just not what is used to be, as much as that sentiment is a symptom of rose-tinted nostalgia. A couple of seconds of a melodic melody over boring power chords, do not a successful song make!
The truly unfortunate part is that Arch Enemy has the potential to be a really special band, they have an energetic, technically competent, and gimmicky vocalist in White-Gluz and one of the best progressive metal guitar players in Jeff Loomis (ex-Nevermore). As with each successive release, it is becoming painfully evident that the majority songwriter in the band is the rhythm guitarist and longtime member of the band, Michael Amott. Mr. Amott has been attempting to write the same track for four records now, and it is obvious that he isn’t the most creative writer. His writing, while easy to follow, is losing gravitas as the years go by and audiences are becoming more exposed to highly technical and musically proficient bands. It hurts to declare that at this rate, Arch Enemy are one lukewarm release away from being a Guitar Center boomer melodic death metal band.
A common sentiment on the internet, which I will echo here, Jeff Loomis is being wasted on Arch Enemy. A paycheck is a paycheck and playing for a band that fills out stadiums is a smart move, but as a collective, we wish that Loomis took a more central role in the songwriting process, even if that meant something as small as adding more of his signature solos to more tracks like the ones on “Handshake” and “Exiled From Earth”. More Loomis next time, please!
In truth, Deceivers does shine brightly when it leans into its more expansive moments: “Poisoned Arrow” has a grandiose chorus with layered synths that became an instant earworm, and “Sunset Over the Empire” is an in-your-face action-packed banger, with a menacing chorus that keeps up the momentum set up by opener “Handshake With Hell”. If Arch Enemy stopped trying so hard to be an “Arena Anthem Metal” band and focused on writing creatively rich sections, like the ones seen on a few tracks, they would be back in the sunshine of fame. But every enjoyable section, every memorable melody, every bouncy groove, every huge chorus, is mired in a sludge of throwaway verse and pre-chorus riffs, that the gold-among-coal search becomes exhausting. Truth told, even after several attempts at listening to Deceivers cover-to-cover, I could not help but tune out and be distracted by some teenager extreme metal band belting out an absolute jam fest making Arch Enemy sound geriatric. “One Last Time” and closer “Exiled From Earth” may be halfway decent tracks, if I had the stamina to focus on what they contained.
Arch Enemy’s Deceivers is wide swathes of mediocrity with a few smatterings of enjoyable melodic death metal. There are fun moments if you are prepared to wade through all the boredom to find them.
1 comment
I really wanted to like this version of AE. Being a huge fan of Nevermore…I was thrilled when Loomis came to the band….unfortunately…I agree with pretty much every statement above. I’ll give this one a quick run-thru…but I really don’t have high hopes. And that’s very disappointing.