Interview: Helena Torstensson - Dragoncat
Photo: Martina Tornemyr - Ravenheart
Michael Amott and his brother Christopher started Arch Enemy 1996 together with Johan Liiva on vocals and Daniel Erlandsson on drums. The lineup has changed some through the years like 2001 when Angela Gossow replaced John Livia on vocals and 2005 when Christopher Amott quit the band to focus on his studies. He was replaced by Fredrik Akesson but 2007 Christopher joined the band again and Fredik went to work with Opeth. Now Arch Enemy is: Michael Amott on lead guitarr, Christopher Amott on guitarr, Anglea Gossow on growling vocals, Sharlee D´Angleo on bas and Daniel Erlandsson on drums. Arch Enemy is one of Swedens largest death metal bands and like with other Swedish bands they are bigger in for instance USA and Japan than they are at home. We had the great pleasure of doing this interview with Sharlee D´Angelo.
 Venia: How would you like to introduce Arch Enemy to the Croatian audience?
Sharlee D´Angelo: The world's hardest and most wimpy metal band all at once!
Venia: What is the story behind your name?
Sharlee D´Angelo: All good names were already taken, this is an old classic expression that works great and sounds metal. There is no bigger thought behind it but you could say that we are the archenemies of everything that is boring, mainstream bad and just boring!
Venia: Which bands has had the greatest influence on your creative work and style in the beginning of your career and which are now?
Sharlee D´Angelo: It is so incredible much, like in the beginning we wanted to make classic metal. Things that has influenced us is everything in the early 80´s and over to the thrash, also old 70´s influences in everything from Purple Rainbow to Thin Lizzy and Judas Priest. You could say that we have baked together all of that into the same cookie. Nowadays what you listen to kind of goes a little in waves and we listen to very, very different music. Like Angela for instance she is the one in the band that listens to the most extreme music, she still stands with her knees deep down in the florida swamp, while the rest of us listens to more melodic things.
Venia: Who writes the lyrics and the music?
Sharlee D´Angelo: Well Angela has taken over more and more and she is doing like 90 % of the lyrics and then Michael does the rest, he is the musical primus engine in the band, but we all contribute with bringing in what we have.Then we put it all together and try to make songs from everyone's little musicals wonders.
Venia: What inspires you to write/create?
Sharlee D´Angelo: Mostly it's like sitting down playing and then you come up with stuff that you think sounds really cool or that you like playing and it gives you something just musically. Or it's something that is really easy to play just because it sways well and so on. But the things that often works best is when we all sit down in the rehearsal room and try to create something of it. Then it's like if everyone starts to dig at once then you know that yeah this works really good, everyone feels for it but somewhere it´s all about your gut feeling. You can intellectualise how much you want, but then the things that becomes best are the stuff that are like on a teenage level or something , because that is was what made you start to like it in the beginning. When you first heard something like a very simple Judas Priest riff you thought it sounded so very good and we kind of still works like that. But every time we create a new record we don't go on like "now we are going to do our really best" instead we just focus on what we are doing at the moment. But it's a little like you still work on creating the ultimate metal record somewhere and that is a goal that you can never achieve but you still keep working really hard to get there.
Venia: Do you need to be on a special mood to write/create?
Sharlee D´Angelo: Yes in a way, I don't need to be on a special mood, it can be different moods, it depends. Sometimes you are on a really bad mood and then you can find a way to express your frustration and then sometimes you just feel so terrible good. But most of the time you feel really bad and then you sit down and play, then you create something and that makes you feel so much better. It helps lift you up, even if the problems still exists you feel better at the moment and that gives you a more positive lifestyle, which makes it much easier to deal with all your problems. I believe it's something similar to the endorphin in a way.
Venia: What drives you and makes you keep working with music?
Sharlee D´Angelo: Because I am too damn stupid to do anything else, it´s as simple as that. Oh well the thing is that we have been doing this for such a long time that you know it´s hard to imagine anything else. I mean this is what I've always wanted to do but sometimes it also feels very hard.
Venia: Are there any god and bad things with touring?
Sharlee D´Angelo: Yes absolutely! Touring is a really great example on something that is both god and bad on the same time, cause it can be so bloody boring and so terrible though. Like there are something that makes me so mad that I want to start fighting and that is people that says "I LOVE to travel, it's my dream to..." "You, you have no damn idea!" I can tell you this that I like and enjoy to be on different places but I don't like to travel between those places cause it´s so damn boring. I have developed an allergy to airports for example because travelling is only about waiting to get from point A to point B, this profession contains of like 95% waiting, you just wait to do anything.
Venia: How do you entertain yourself while your wait?
Sharlee D´Angelo:Yeah well you can read for example but I listen to a lot of music. In the beginning when you started touring you were also a lot like a tourist, cause you came to so many places where you had never been before. You ran out and did just everything, saw everything you should see and so on. But now it's more like you are on some kind of energy save program that you have because you focus more on having enough energy to do a good show in the evening. If you entertain yourself too much during the day then you get tired when you are going to play and then you are just a great disappointment to everybody that has came and paid for the show. So you have to think about that and so many people wonders about this lifestyle that we are living, like "you are up all nights and sleep all days" like my mother for example she tries to call me when I am an tour but I doesn't wake up until 4 in the afternoon and then she is like "can't you go up a little earlier" and so on but what she does not think of is that if I lived a normal life, had normal job then I would go up like 07 in the morning. With a normal job you have your peak around lunchtime but we shall have our peak somewhere between 10 or 11 in the evening. So we have to change everything because if you go up early then you get so very tired at 11 in the evening and it´s hard to motivate yourself. If you wake up too early and that sometimes happens then you have to get a 2 hours nap somewhere otherwise you get so very tired. But I don't complain! *laugh*
Venia: Where is your favourite place on earth? If you have vacation what do you do?
Sharlee D´Angelo: I never go on vacation, my vacation is to be at home and then I make sure that I am at home as much as possible. If you are away for almost 7 months a year then you really appreciate to be home. Like now this summer when we play mostly festivals during the weekends then I hope I can go to my parents place and just burn a lot of meat! That is one of the things I look forward to the most! I have realized the last couple of years that either I am away, or like last year when I was home some time it was such a pissy weather so it was impossible to have a barbeque. (Last summer it rained for like 6 weeks in a row in Sweden) Then there are places that you like better than others. I have come to like Sweden more after being out on the roads and it´s like you understand that it is somewhere here that you belong. Even if you complain a lot about Sweden it´s a pretty cool place. But there are some places like Australia for instance... Venia: Well there are a lot of spiders and scary animals there...
Venia: Well there are a lot of spiders and scary animals there...
Sharlee D´Angelo: Oh well it's not like the kangaroos or koalas comes jumping up on the hotel balcony...
*we all laugh*
Sharlee D´Angelo: Australia is that kind of county where you just get happy in your soul by being there, everything is just the way it should be - at least I think so. But it´s far way and it takes long time go there. *laugh*
Venia: What can you tell me about your latest record "Rise Of The Tyrant"?
Sharlee D´Angelo:It's just exellently good! *laugh* Well I am very happy with it at least pure musically, the production did not end up the way I had imagined it, but people seams to like it anyway so that is one of those little things that only you think about. But musically and lyrically I am really happy with it! For me it's a little like everything goes in waves. We had been out touring very much after the "Wages Of Sin" record that came out just before "Anthemes Of Rebellion". We had started to tour very, very hard and then we kind of begun to like playing the more simple songs so then all the songs on that record became very simple. Some things that we liked with that made "Doomseday Machine" become not on a negative way but in a way monotone and then we got feed up with that after touring with it for 2 years. So now we wanted to make things difficult again and started to throw in more guitar solos, change of beats and stuff like we have not done in almost 10 years. So then that feels fresh again and on next record I have no idea.
Venia: Do you have any plans for or started working on your next record yet?
Sharlee D´Angelo: We write all the time but perhaps not finished songs, but new songs always comes when we start rehearsing. Someone always comes up with something when we should rehearsal on the live set before the tour, suddenly we sit there playing on completely new stuff instead. That is so much more fun! *laugh* We have been touring so very, very much the last 7-8 years so we are pretty experienced anyway but on the first show maybe we are a little like "oh fuck, oh yeah that thing" but then on the second show everything works.
Venia: What is on your mind when you enter the stage?
Sharlee D´Angelo:
Does everything work? Haha Nah but usually when you go on tour we go with the crew and then you don't have to think about it because you know that you have people that are good at their job. But today is our first festival show that we do this summer and most of our crew is American and English and we have not flown them in for this, we only have our sound techniques with us. There are some other people here that we don't really know what they are doing so you have to be a little hands on yourself and that is the only thing that makes me some nervous. I am never nervous regarding my bas playing or anything like that on stage but you kind of think like "does it work now", you just want to know that it sounds good and that nothing breaks cause that make things so bloody hard. But otherwise I don't think that much, when I am on stage my mind is pretty empty. You kind of empty your head on all other impressions, you just focus on what you are doing and then automatically if you start to think the you like wonders where you are and so on, but it just kind of keeps going. You can all songs and it's like some kind of muscle line, the only thing you have to focus on is the audience and you should like check what's going on out there.
Venia: What is music for you, what does music mean?
Sharlee D´Angelo: It's almost everything and you get more and more single minded actually. First when you were working and had an ordinary day job then all you were looking forward to was when you quit work, headed directly to rehearsal with the band and that was like all you looked forward to. Now this is what you do as a job, but then what I do on my free time always is something related to music, in a way and I am probably a pretty boring person to spend time with. *laughs*
Venia: How early did you understand that you wanted to work with music, was it obvious that you would play guitar oh sorry I mean bas?
Sharlee D´Angelo:I actually started playing guitar. I think I had it in my head in a way. I just thought this is the way it´s going to be and there were nothing realistic at all with that it was just something I wanted to do. It started when I was like 7-8 years old when I heard Kiss for the first time cause they were something more than just a band that played good music, they were so unreal, they were like something godlike and then I thought that this is something I want to do. I still have that mentality because even if you do the smallest clubb gig for 150 people then you treat it like you were on the worlds greatest arena. I mean this is the way I have been raised, you think or you dont think at all it just comes automatically during that 1,5 hour then you are a superstar but then as soon as you get off stage then you are ordinary again and thank god for that!
Venia: How has your own taste in music developets?
Sharlee D´Angelo: Well it´s very regressive cause the older you get the less energy you have to take in new bands.All the new bands that comes does some kind of you can say decoction of the stuff that has been before including us, we are extemly like that, we just take something here and there. There are some new bands that are good but mostly there is not that much and that makes you go further back and listen to that stuff that you listened to when you were younger. Also those bands that you did not know of or listend to back then, so you dig deeper down in the 70´s for example. Regarding metal it´s really little stuff that actually inspires, that is new today. Like when people ask you what kind of new records you like and they expect you to drop a new hot band when you just tell them that the new Testament is good. But there is no new band it's just mostly those bands that if they manage to do something good then that makes you really motivated! Because they know how to make their handicraft. Then there is very blend of everything depending on what kind of mood you are, sometimes I like to listen to kängpunk (I have not found the english word for this), träsk döds (sludge metal?) or it´s all ERA ballads. *laugh*
Venia: How has the band affected your life?
Sharlee D´Angelo:Yeah well it affects everything; it's the thing that you do as a profession, your creative outlet and the thing that you form your life around. If you work with something like this then it's hard to have a normal life. Because it´s not like you quit at 5 in the afternoon and then can leave your work behind and go home to your family. With this profession you go out on tour for a couple of months, then you are home, and then you go away again so it affects absolutely all parts of life. All relations you have or rather don't have *laugh* it affects just everything.
Venia: If you were hit by a car and lie dying on the ground - but you got to sing one song that people would remember you for, a song that would sum up you which song would you choose?
Sharlee D´Angelo: I have already given an answer on the question which song I would like to have played on my funeral and I guess this is the same thing. That would be "The man with the child in his eyes" by Kate Bush. I don't know why but I have always liked that song from the first time I heard it. It's a song that you never get tired of. I don't know why but it feels close to me in a way. But I don't think that I would manage to sing it and especially not if I were hit by a car haha but then maybe just because of that!
Venia: Do you have any message for your fans in Croatia?
Sharlee D´Angelo: Yes we have never been there and it would be really cool if we could come and play! The closest we come this summer is Slovenia.
Venia: Thank you so much for you time!
For more information about Arch Enemy please visit www.archenemy.net |
