Michael Amott has been a part of some of death metal’s most influential and discussed bands over the last 15 plus years. The guitarist started out in Carnage, of which three fifths of the group would go on to form seminal death metal band Dismember within a year of the release of their only album, Dark Recollections in 1990. From there, Amott would join the fathers of gore grind, Carcass, playing on their ground breaking releases Necroticism: Descanting The Insalubrious (from 1991) and Heartwork (from 1993). He left Carcass after recording Heartwork in search of something new.

It would be a couple of years later that this “something new” would become a reality. Amott, together with his brother Christopher also on guitars, Daniel Erlandsson on drums and vocalist Johan Liiva, formed Arch Enemy and without even a demo behind them, they teamed up with producer Fredrik Nordström to record their debut, Black Earth. Mike Amott would take the producing reigns with Nordström for 1998’s Stigmata and their line-up would be completed by the recruitment of bassist Sharlee D’Angelo for 1999’s Burning Bridges.

As things were starting to pick up speed for the group, an unforseen move saw Liiva replaced by an unknown in German vocalist Angela Gossow. It was a move that would send rumblings of concern through their fan base at the thought of a female fronted death metal band. Gossow soon put the nay sayer’s to rest with a blistering performance on 2001’s Wages Of Sin album which was followed up with the acclaimed Anthems Of Rebellion from 2003 and more recently, last year’s Dead Eyes See No Future EP.

Currently making the rounds of the American summer touring circuit is the very chipper and upbeat sounding Arch Enemy drummer Daniel Erlandsson who was in Columbus Ohio (U.S.A.) when he spoke to Simon Milburn about the recording of their latest album titled Doomsday Machine, their first tour on the Ozzfest circuit and the departure of guitarist Christopher Amott.

“Things are going very good. The shows have been going very good so far. Obviously, we just released the new album. It’s been out for a week roughly and the sales are very good. It’s looking very exciting at the moment,” begins the drummer.

In what is a bit of an anomaly in today’s music market, a non-U.S. band has had their album released in the U.S. prior to the rest of the world getting the release. Arch Enemy’s Doomsday Machine was released almost a month before it’s scheduled rest of the world date of August 22 in order to coincide with their billing on this years Ozzfest tour.

“It’s all a matter of marketing that stuff. Other people make those decisions,” Erlandsson says rather mildly.

Their inclusion on the second stage of this year’s Ozzfest sees Arch Enemy play along side the likes of The Haunted, As I Lay Dying, The Black Dahlia Murder, Gizmachi and Trivium. Unlike the headlining act on that stage, Rob Zombie, Arch Enemy have no set time that they take the stage at each stop of the tour which is proving to be somewhat of a different experience for the group.

“It varies because we are part of this rotating schedule. I think there’s about eight to nine bands that rotate and the earliest you go on is 9:20am and the latest is 12:40pm. Even if you get the latest spot at 12:40pm, it’s definitely not late enough y’know?” laughs Erlandsson.

The real challenge posed by the potential early start in what almost resembles a normal work day becomes difficult when an Ozzfest date is the day after a side show.

“Yeah, but honestly I expected it to be a lot worse that what it is. The worst thing about it is when you do an off date show and you play really late like midnight or something, when you pack all your gear together and leave around three o’clock in the night and then you have to be at the next Ozzfest by seven in the morning. I guess that’s the downside of it. But other than that, it’s been very good.”

When pushed for his favourite part of being on the Ozzfest circuit for the first time, Erlandsson remarks that he is simply glad to be on the tour although he was initially harbouring some concerns at the possibility of being the opening act for an Ozzfest performance – concerns which have been quickly dispelled by the crowds’ response.

“Playing the shows definitely and seeing the reaction of the crowd. Initially I thought that if we go on stage at 9:20 in the morning, what sort of reaction are we gonna get? But I was blown away when I saw a mosh pit at like 9:30 in the morning! As soon as they opened the doors, the fans start running in and by five minutes past nine, there’s like two or three thousand kids! It’s awesome!!”

His expectations of this first foray as a part of the decade old summer tour of metal mayhem were not quite what I expected to hear from the drummer upon asking him.

“Yeah, I thought it was going to be very hot because it’s summer over here and I was right about that! It’s very hot,” laughs Erlandsson. “I’ve been to America in the summer before but obviously we’re playing outdoors now so you get to experience the heat from another perspective, but (I’m not getting) much of a tan because I try to stay away from the sun as much as possible,” Erlandsson continues with a chuckle.

On a slightly more serious note, he continues, “It’s great to be on Ozzfest with Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath playing obviously and one of my expectations for the tour was to see them live and I’ve done that. So it’s great.”

Erlandsson’s focus other than his own playing is all about the mighty Black Sabbath and the legendary Iron Maiden as there are no other bands that he really wants to see as badly as those two big name metal acts.

“Not really. Usually, our bus is parked on a parking lot that is very close to the second stage so you hear all the second stage bands play even if you like it or not. I’ll check a couple of bands out, but Sabbath and Maiden are the true metal bands on the tour so I’ll definitely check them out as much as I can.”

One of the aforementioned buses suffered a fatal breakdown during the early hours of the morning as the band were making the journey back to New Jersey (U.S.A.) after a side show in Burlington, Vermont (U.S.A.). The breakdown resulted in the band missing the curtain call for their second stage appearance in Camden, New Jersey (U.S.A.).

“I think it was some kind of failure in the transmission. That’s very mechanical so I don’t know much about that. We were left in a workshop and missed the show. Sweating! When the bus broke down, obviously the air conditioning broke down as well and it was very hot so we were all sweating.”

When the band are not being stranded by mechanical failure, they are making the most of their appearance on this years Ozzfest, belting out a short set to please fans and warm up the masses for the long day ahead.

“We play 20 minutes. We try to fit in five songs and we did for a couple of Ozzfest shows but every time we ran out of time by a minute and they wouldn’t have that. So, we cut it down to four songs now. They’re very strict. Every band has got a five minute changeover so you gotta be effective.”

With their latest opus, Doomsday Machine, receiving a U.S. release almost a month ahead of the rest of the world, the Swedes are making the most of the opportunity by not only including a new track in their brief set list, but also getting their latest promotional video clip aired as well. Still, even after a successful first week by the band’s previous benchmarks, detractors are voicing their dissatisfaction with the band’s latest album. But those negative voices do not seem to bother Erlandsson.

“We do one song. We do Nemesis which is the third track on the new album and we’ve also recorded a video for that song. We did that right before the Ozzfest tour back home in Sweden. It’s just premiered on American TV. The reaction has been very good. Obviously the sales speak for themselves. We just got the first report in. It was 12,000 copies during the first week and that’s very good by our standards. We’ve also heard people say, like you always do with the internet now, that it’s ‘not good’ or ‘They should have quit after the last album,’ or whatever. As long as you know you’ve done a good album, being a musician and having played music for so long as we’ve done, you have the feeling when you’ve done something good or not.”

Now that the new album is all said and done and available on shelves in the U.S. and soon to be the rest of the world, the end result wasn’t quite what was planned from the outset. In fact, there may not have been a clear vision to begin with.

“I don’t think that anybody in the band had that clear of a vision of what it was gonna be. Back when we started rehearsing these songs, they were just sketches y’know? The ideas kinda finalised during the process of the whole thing. We’re all very happy with it now. Back in the start of the process, nobody actually knew.”

By contrast to their previous full length album, Anthems Of Rebellion, their latest effort was a more structured outing from start to finish.

“I think Anthems Of Rebellion we mostly wrote the riffs on the road seeing as we toured so much right before that album. With this new album, we had an abundance of ideas. Everybody in the band had a lot of ideas and it was a very smooth ride. We did preproduction on our own and we did like three months of rehearsing before we actually entered the studio. We had some time to actually analyse the songs and see if they were good enough y’know?”

After a successful partnership working with Rickard Bengtsson manning the recording desk and Andy Sneap handling the mix on their previous EP, Arch Enemy chose to continue that arrangement with Doomsday Machine starting initially at Slaughterhouse Studios in Halmstad, Sweden with Bengtsson.

“That was mainly because of him being in Sweden. His studio is setup in our home town. It was very comfortable to have the studio so close at hand y’know? After a long day of recording drum tracks, you can just go home and sleep in your own bed. Also, we know him very well and we’ve worked with him before. He’s got a very musical ear as well, especially with the vocals. He helped Angela a lot on this recording because he’s actually a singer himself. Then we took the hard drives over to England and mixed with Andy Sneap. Rickard Bengtsson actually followed us into Andy’s studio. I think the results of that are pretty clear. The production on the album doesn’t sound like traditional Andy Sneap I think. It’s got a little bit of a more natural feeling to the production over it. I think that you can soon hear it that it’s him on the album but it’s a little bit different and that’s good.”

Arch Enemy have worked with several different producers over their last few releases - Bengtsson on 2004’s Dead Eyes See No Future EP, Sneap on 2003’s Anthems Of Rebellion and Nordström on 2001’s Wages Of Sin – the results of which are all distinct.

“Working with Sneap is all good. All those producers are very good but I think Andy Sneap is a bit more methodical in his approach. He knows exactly what he wants from the musicians and he lets you know what he wants,” laughs Erlandsson. “He tells you what to do. Rickard is all together a very critical ear. For example, if I’m recording drums, he comes up with ideas, saying ‘Don’t do that. Do this,’ or sometimes I tell him to shut up and I’ll just do my own thing anyway. But usually, he’s got some good ideas. And Fredrik Nordström, I can’t really remember what it was like to work with him. That was a few years ago,” struggles the skins man.

The abundance of ideas that Erlandsson referred to previously when writing Doomsday Machine led to the quintet spending the better part of six months working on, recording and finalising the new material.

“We spent about eight weeks recording all the stuff and then we spent another three or four weeks with Andy mixing it. That’s three months of recording and mixing plus another three months of rehearsing. So, that’s half a year down the drain,” Erlandsson laughs.

When I reiterate the first week sales figures the album has recorded in the U.S. and suggest that the time spent creating Doomsday machine wasn’t merely “down the drain”, Erlandsson is quick to agree.

“I know. That’s right. Yes! Definitely! We definitely worked hard for this. Not only with this album, but over the last few years… touring and promoting.”

But the hard work of the last few years recently took its toll on original member and lead guitarist Christopher Amott – brother of Arch Enemy’s founding member and lead guitarist Mike Amott (ex-Carcass, ex-Carnage). Christopher Amott sat down with the group to inform his band mates of his decision.

“It was over the last tour that he did was us, he kind of grew more and more tired of being on the road, especially being away from home so much. He said he always wanted to go back to school and get a degree and take some time off from the band. That’s what he’s done now. I’m not sure if he’s ever gonna come back, but if he does, he’s more than welcome. It’s kind of a tough life to lead. Not to complain about being on the road, but if you don’t want it 100%, then it’s not going to last. Initially, we tried to change his mind. But I mean if he’s not happy in the band, then he’s not going to make anybody else happier. So, it’s going to affect everybody in the band if he’s not feeling for it. So, we just let him go.”

Erlandsson had a suspicion that something like this was coming before the recording of their latest album commenced. Amott completed his commitment to the group in the studio before bowing out.

“I had a feeling that he was gonna quit but he didn’t actually quit until the middle of the recording of the album. That’s when he told us that he’s definitely not up for any tours or anything. He did all his parts and he participated as much as before in the writing process. So, he’s as much a part of this album anyways.”

To fill the much needed shoes of the position for second guitarist for the group, they didn’t take long to decide that guitarist Gus G (Firewind, Nightrage) was the man for the job. However, his tenure is not long term.

“Mike Amott is pretty good friends with him and they know each other from before. We did a show in London last year and one of Gus’ bands, Nightrage, were one of the support bands for that show. We saw him play and he’s a very impressive player. His style is very similar to Chris’ style as well. He fits very well. We tried him out for a couple of rehearsals and it clicked. He’s been doing great on this tour. He fits into the band and he’s a great person as well, so, we’re having fun with him. I definitely know that he’s not going to be a part of the touring line-up after Ozzfest.”

On the subject of touring, word doing the rounds of the down under rumour mill is that Arch Enemy are scheduled to be hitting our fine shores for the first time ever towards the end of 2005.

“Actually, I would like to say that it’s true because we are definitely talking about it. I think the shows are being booked as we speak. I can’t wait to go down under! We’re looking at maybe three or four shows in the beginning of November this year. We’ll see what happens.”

The additional part of the rumour is that they are bringing up and comers Trivium along for the ride.

“That’s what the rumour is,” laughs Erlandsson. “We can’t be official about that, but that’s the rumour that we’re coming down with Trivium.”

The prospect of the band’s first trip down here has definitely planted the seed of excitement and adventure into the drummer.

“I know it’s very hot and I know you’ve got lots of animals everywhere. If we’re going, I’d like to have some time off and go and see some of the desserts or whatever… really check it out because obviously we’ve never been there. So, everybody is looking forward to going there.”

Arch Enemy's latest album, Doomsday Machine, is out on August 22 on Century Media Records through Shock. For more information on Arch Enemy, check out www.archenemy.net.