Long-standing champions of melodic metal, Arch Enemy has always had it’s pulse on the metal world. Thirty years into their career, they are still standing strong and providing guitar heroics and driving melodeath anthems. Blood Dynasty is their twelfth album in that time, so we reached out to bassist Sharlee D’Angelo to get a better feel for this latest effort, in both it’s sound and surprises, in addition to taking a look back at Doomsday Machine and D’Angelo’s thoughts on bass playing as a whole.
Dead Rhetoric: What do you think are the defining characteristics of Blood Dynasty, as the latest Arch Enemy album?
Sharlee D’Angelo: It’s kind of what I like in Arch Enemy. It has a lot of the landmark characteristics of Arch Enemy as a band. It has the aggression, it has the melody, it has the groove. It has most of that; in a way, it’s going in a slightly different direction. Which one, I have a hard time telling you because I haven’t figured out that yet myself. Some of the stuff isn’t really what we usually do, but it’s within the realm of what we usually do. As always, I’m very bad at describing things that I’m involved with myself, but describing music with words has always been difficult.
Dead Rhetoric: I think that makes sense. In listening to the album, you can hear those landmarks, but also a few surprises that I wasn’t expecting but it never felt like it was coming from out of left field.
D’Angelo: Every listener has their own experience of what it is and what it isn’t. Some people have been surprised by certain things and I’m like, ‘we usually do a lot of that,’ but maybe it’s something they haven’t picked up on. But I do feel that it’s, as a whole, the album makes sense to me as a whole piece. Even though it’s not a themed album by any means, it kind of – something happened later on the recording process and we started to see things take shape as ‘one piece.’ That’s when it started to make sense to me. In the beginning, it seemed like one song went one way and this one went in another. They were going in all directions and I was seeing where it would lead, but then at the end, it kind of went through a mold of some sort, or it’s just the way we take things.
Dead Rhetoric: From your end, do you feel there was anything specific you really wanted to accomplish with this album or is it one of those things where you just jump back into it as a group?
D’Angelo: Yup, it’s mostly that. Once songs start to take shape from little musical ideas to actual songs, you try to see where it’s going. After a few songs, you see if there is anything you feel is missing. Very rarely do we say, ‘well, we need one of these songs,’ they usually come on their own. It’s just up to us to pick which one.
Dead Rhetoric: Joey Concepcion joined the band in 2024. He had toured with the band previously. What do you think he brings to the table for Arch Enemy?
D’Angelo: With any band, there’s a hard time losing a long-time member. You don’t necessarily lose a friend, but that person is no longer in your close vicinity all the time as they may have been before. You lose something, but at least if you get someone good in, what they give you is a shot of energy. They come in with a completely different set of eyes and ears, and enthusiasm for things that that you…sort of start to take for granted and lose your enthusiasm for. It makes you more aware of it again. A new member always rejuvenated a band, I think.
Dead Rhetoric: Arch Enemy’s 30th anniversary as a band is this year. Having been there for most of it, what do you feel has kept the band going and thriving?
D’Angelo: I think it’s the same thing that it has been from the beginning. Our striving to find metal that we feel is missing out there. There’s lots of things that we like, but also things that we feel are missing today that we try to put into our music. As everyone else, we try to make the perfect metal album. It’ll probably never happen [laughs], but that’s the goal.
Dead Rhetoric: Just aim as close as you can…
D’Angelo: Exactly! And also, we are all friends. We like to hang out with each other. We share a lot of common musical taste, but also have our own different influences that we bring in. that’s sort of like the core. It’s kind of the same that it was back in the beginning. I think we have the same fuel and driving power as we had when we started. That’s just what keeps it going. It hasn’t been an overnight success. It’s been very slow and steady, but it’s been going in the right direction the whole time. It’s been baby steps and it’s always something new and always something better. That’s what keeps you going.
Dead Rhetoric: On the subject of anniversaries, Doomsday Machine turns 20 this year. What do you recall about that time in the band’s history?
D’Angelo: That was a very sort of pivotal moment, because a lot of things had kind of changed for us and were looking up. We signed a new record deal, and things were going better. We landed a spot on Ozzfest that year, which was a very big deal for us. But with the actual album, the songs were great. We felt it was going to be something really good. Recording the album, we had so many technical setbacks. We tried someone who we hadn’t worked with before to mix the album and that turned out not so good, which set us back time-wise. We had to postpone the album a bit, so it wasn’t out until two weeks into Ozzfest. Right before, while we were in the studio, our then-guitar player, Christopher Amott, decided that he wanted to leave the band. So we were in the studio and were already pressed for time, and just trying to make it in time for Ozzfest, and all of a sudden there we are as a quartet. We found our good friend, Gus G, to step in and help us for Ozzfest. We were eternally grateful for him doing that. But it just seemed like it was thing after thing in terms of obstacles all the time.
But in the end, the album turned out great. It turned out to be our breakthrough album in the US. I think we did 5-6 US tours on that album cycle. It was a change for the band, and it was a step up. We got to tour the world many times over and experience new things. So all in all it was hard work at first, but it paid off. We still play songs from that album live, “Nemesis” and “My Apocalypse” haven’t left the setlist since the album came out.
Dead Rhetoric: That was a crazy amount of pressure to have on that one album…
D’Angelo: Looking back at it now, it’s like, “okay.” You remember what happened, but you tend to just remember the good times. There were a few obstacles, but it’s okay.
Dead Rhetoric: You have been involved with a number of bands over the years. What’s your approach to bass playing in metal?
D’Angelo: You listen to what you have, songwise and riffwise, and think about what you can do to add to it and make it better. To make it either more or less aggressive, or what can I do harmonically. You sort of think your way around it by listening to the music and you try different things. I rarely sit down and just work out note for note exactly what – you learn riffs but a lot of the time I step away from what the guitars are doing and concentrate more on what the drums are doing. That’s usually my starting point. Sometimes you just have to do exactly what the guitars are doing, because it’s the most to-the-point and the most aggressive or if you want to groove a bit more, you play less and less. As few notes as possible to see where the rhythm takes you. You can do little fills and things; I’m very drum-oriented. That’s kind of, in broad strokes, how I approach a song.
Dead Rhetoric: Do you feel that with different bands, you have gotten a better sense with different approaches? Is it something you have accumulated due to experience?
D’Angelo: I think that approach is due to it being how things were in stuff that I listened to, stuff from the ‘70s and ‘80s. I sort of adopted that from what I heard. With the more extreme music, when death and thrash came, it was a lot of just playing what the guitars were playing. I thought, ‘well there is more to it’ and that is why I started to step away. So my starting point is not to do that, but it’s my second choice if it’s needed. Then its different for whoever you are working with. Whoever wrote the song has the last say, but I try to persuade people and have them try things or say that it will add dynamics.
It’s different every time you work with new people, but that’s also something exciting about working in music. It’s working with actual people. Especially when you can sit face to face and jam, just trying different things on the spot. You come up with a different result very quickly. You can hear what works and doesn’t work. Then it’s basically just an argument of who likes what best. But that’s exciting, to work with someone in the room
Dead Rhetoric: Arch Enemy plays a massive amount of live shows. What have you gained from being able to see points all over the world, as a person?
D’Angelo: It changes your outlook on life. You get a view of the world, which is great. When people have opinions about this, that, or the other…have you been there or have you been exposed to that culture at all? Have you talked to anyone from that country? Sometimes we don’t get the time to delve deeper in some countries we go to because of time constraints, but some countries we come back to time and time again. You get a sense of the people and how they think and how it works, and why they have certain opinions in parts of the world. You see the world in all sorts of colors instead of black and white, because that’s what it is.
Dead Rhetoric: What does metal mean to you, given that it’s been such a big piece of your life?
D’Angelo: It’s what I live and breathe. I think music overall is, but metal more than anything. Hard rock and metal is what taught me most when I was a kid. It was something – it’s aggressive, especially to people who don’t listen to it. But what they don’t understand is the energy and joy that you find in that forceful energy that it has. It’s a positive thing, even though it might have lyrics about things that are negative. It helps you cleanse your system, in a way, of bad thoughts. Something flushes it away or puts a spotlight on it and makes you think about it more consciously than you had before.
The music is the vehicle for those lyrics, and the music hits you differently than if it was a ballad. Which is why there are not too many super romantic love songs with double kick drums…although there should be! It just happens to be that way. Aggressive music brings on, not aggressive thoughts, but you think about things more forcefully. That’s why there are love ballads, and there are murder ballads too and those are great, but they are about love.
Dead Rhetoric: You have the US tour starting this spring. What else do you have for 2025?
D’Angelo: I think we have a bit of a break in the summer, then we are doing a big European tour in the fall. I think that is all we have for the year. It’s a bit easier on us this year than the past 20!
