‘Queen of Death Metal’ Screams Above Average (July 18, 2008)

With: FireWind, Divine Heresy, and Dark Tranquility

Where: The Starlite Room

When: Saturday Night

It’s Saturday night in Edmonton, and dark, ominous clouds loom over the city. A storm is blowing in and a collective shiver runs through the crowd waiting for shelter in The Starlite Room.

The tempest on the horizon is wrought by veteran death metal band Arch Enemy on their latest tour, Tyranny and Bloodshed.
Arch Enemy, like many death metal bands, has not much exposure in North America. Even devout followers of metal could be forgiven for not knowing the dark, heavy, melodic sound that shakes the stage, blending melody with brutality.

In We Will Rise, the haunting song from their 2003 Anthems of Rebellion album, Arch Enemy vows to Tear down the walls / Wake up the World/ Ignorance is not bliss / So fed up with second best / Our time is here and now.
Since their change in vocalist in 2001 from former founding member Johan Liva to German wunderkind, journalist-turned-lead singer Angela Gossow, the band has seized every opportunity for larger exposure and successfully cemented themselves on the scene as a powerful metal band.

Fans are thoroughly enraptured when the tiny, unimposing singer takes the stage. The earth starts to rumble / World powers fall / A’warring for the heavens / A peaceful man stands tall, as the lyrics from Symphony of Destruction describe. But it’s not a man standing tall when Gossow takes the stage and delivers deep, powerful roars of vocal power that would be unlikely to come from a fellow twice her size.

Dwarfed by her six-foot-something Swedish band mates, what she lacks in size and Y chromosomes, she makes up for in sheer talent and riveting on-stage charisma.

Fans may not care that the attractive singer unwillingly graced the front cover of Revolver magazine last year as one of “the hottest chicks in metal.” (“I didn’t want to be in that because I thought it was the wrong idea for me. And they put a picture of me in there anyway with some quote,” she later said in an interview.) Most of the die-hard metal fans are more interested in her exceptional skills in the male-dominated art of guttural vocal-screaming, complimented by technically-accomplished guitarists Michael Amott and his younger brother Chris, with Sharlee D’Angelo on bass and the bone rattling drumming of Daniel Erlandsson.

Fellow veteran Swedish death metallers Dark Tranquility, Greek power metal band FireWind and the fledgling Divine Heresy delivered such an inspiring, interactive and ultimately entertaining performance, that by the time Angela and her Swedes took the stage, the crowd was a sea of raised ‘devil horns,’ brewing with a hurricane of energy and anxious anticipation.
Not to be outdone by their tour mates, Arch Enemy decisively delivered a steel-toed heel-kick to the senses. The intensity that built up before they took the stage, inciting whiplash-causing head-banging en masse and a swirling moshpit torrent, never let up.
With interludes featuring awe-inspiring solos from every instrumental member of the group, in spite of the slightly smaller venue, Arch Enemy and comrades pulled no studded-leather glove punches. The evening celebrated what true heavy metal is all about.

After the show Dino Cazares, guitarist of Divine Heresy and well-known metal band Fear Factory, said, “Not just Edmonton, but Canada as a whole is a good country for metal, there is always a big turn out and the people are good to us.”
During a chance meeting with Sharlee D’Angelo, bassist for Arch Enemy, he commented that perhaps being more in the mainstream consciousness, death metal bands would get more exposure, and consequently, a larger venue. He’d like to see fewer fans turned away due to capacity issues. But don’t expect to see Cazares and his music to go more mainstream anytime soon.

“Actually I like the aspect of keeping it underground,” he says.