ARCH ENEMY Deceivers | Weekly Heavy Metal Album Review

Released by Century Media Records on August 12th, 2022

Quick Background

Swedish melodic death metal band Arch Enemy was formed in 1995. It was founded by Carcass guitarist Michael Amott along with Johan Liiva who was replaced by German vocalist Angela Gossow in 2000. Gossow left the band in 2014 to become the group's manager and was replaced by Canadian vocalist Alissa White-Gluz. The line-up is completed by long timers Daniel Erlandsson − drums and Sharlee D'Angelo − bass. Jeff Loomis joined as second guitar player in 2014. 

Deceivers

Deceivers is their eleventh studio and the follow-up to 2017's Will to Power, marking the longest gap between two of their studio albums. It is also the third studio album with Alissa. All music is composed by Michael Amott and Daniel Erlandsson. And the Lyrics by Michael or Alissa. The album features 11 songs in 45 minutes. That includes  "Mourning Star" as a short instrumental. 

The album opens with the third single "Handshake with Hell", the longest song on the album with almost 6 minutes that includes a short intro that serves as a perfect album opener. It takes about a minute for the song to fully explode and when it does it reminds of early Primal Fear albums. A very strong traditional heavy metal beat. But the hallmark of this song are the pre-choruses and bridge in which Alissa sings in plain clean vocals, as she used to do in her previous band. She also has a great clean voice and I think it was about time for Arch Enemy to leverage this tool for their advantage ( and not for ballads). But everything else around those parts is heavy and aggressive, including a trademark Arch Enemy chorus. And if you were worried after the first song that the band would go soft, then we get the sort of title track "Deceiver, Deceiver" which is one of the heaviest and fastest songs on the album. I love how heavy the chorus is, specially due to the backing vocals. Also great guitar work, it's a fantastic song. Together with "House of Mirrors" those were the first two singles from the album, each receiving a music video. "House of Mirrors" and "In the Eye of the Storm" are typical and strong Swedish melodic death metal anthems. 

"Sunset Over The Empire" goes a bit symphonic but overall keeps the same energy and template as the other singles. I love the breakdown and bridge though. "Spreading Black Wings" is a dark and somber song, influenced by symphonic black metal but still trademark Arch Enemy. 

 "The Watcher" is a fast tempo aggressive song during the verses, but it gets almost folk metal with a dance-friendly chorus, I'm on the fence on this one. But the interesting thing about this song is to demonstrate how aggressive the promotion of this album has been, the video for this song premiered on Aug 14, 2022  and it was filmed at Wacken Festival, Aug 6th, 2022, one week earlier only! By the way, the whole concert was live streamed and it was really good. 

Other than in "Handshake with Hell" clean vocals are only very subtlety used a couple of other times. I think that was a good balance. I'm specially happy that despite shooting to become an even bigger band, Arch Enemy remains heavy and aggressive, and thank God there are no ballads or slow tempo songs on this album. Deceivers was mixed and mastered by Jacob Hansen at Hansen Studios. It's a good modern and bright production. 

The Picky Guy

I'd probably cut the last two songs to make the album even stronger. While they are not bad, both "One Last Time" and "Exiled from Earth" don't add much to the album. Specially as overall the songs on the album are already quite similar to each other. One missed opportunity is that Michael is underusing Jeff Loomis, the guy can shred and also writes some sick songs and riffs (remember Nevermore) but in Arch Enemy he is left as second lead guitar and has zero writing credits. Finally, one thing bothers me a little bit, the lyrics are full of clichés. 

Wrap Up Opinion 

In terms of marketing and promotion band and label went all in with Deceivers. It's understandable, they have a superstar line up, a charismatic front woman, good songs, and rich discography. And as we all know headliners are needed. So Century Media did not save money on their budget here: A fantastic production, a whopping 6 music videos, (so more than half of the album) and a long pre promotion of the album starting from October 2021 with the first single "Deceiver, Deceiver". Although the album was officially announced on January 2022. Overall I like the results, it's their strongest album with Alissa and a very good one, 82/100. 

SCORE: 82/100

Genre: Death Metal

Released by Century Media Records on August 12th, 2022

Rating System

99 - 100 Perfect
94 - 98 Excellent
87 - 93 Great
82 - 86 Very Good
77 - 81 Good
66 - 76 Mixed
58 - 65 Bad

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