ARCH ENEMY — War Eternal (review)

Album · 2014 · Melodic Death Metal

5/5 · 2014-08-29
666sharon666

I have a funny relationship with Arch Enemy. Being the completionist that I am, I own their entire back catalogue and didn't hesitate to also pick up their tenth offering War Eternal either. The change in vocalist from Angela Gossow to Alissa White-Gluz didn't affect that decision in the least, but here's the thing, I can't honestly say I'd rank Arch Enemy among my favourite bands. I'd always rated them relatively consistently at the 4 stars range, with a couple of ups and downs along the way but, I've never ever considered them to be an act capable of producing something really top tier.

At first War Eternal didn't change my mind on that score at all. Another 4 star, more of the same album. So maybe they threw some symphonic elements in on a few songs and they changed vocalist (and one guitarist) but seem really minor things when listening to the end result: The album otherwise sounds exactly as expected. I expected to listen to it a few times and then shelve it for a while and maybe I'd think in a few months time 'okay I'll listen to that again now', which is what I've done with every new Arch Enemy album since discovering them. Only that didn't happen. I kept wanting to listen to it. Eventually I conceded that it was a grower and began to think of it as a 4.5 star album, putting on par with Rise of the Tyrant, which is the album I'd have called their best up until this point. A few other albums may have distracted me along the way to reaching the point where I wanted to write this review, but unlike many others that I've heard and shelved I still kept going back to War Eternal even now, over two months since the album was released. That's not something that Rise of the Tyrant can lay claim to.

That's what really what made me write this review (which I hope reads coherently come its conclusion and not a bunch of my ramblings). It wasn't an album I thought I'd bother about much after a few listens but here I am still enjoying it as much as I did upon release (more, actually) and I guess I have approaching twenty full listens to it already, if I haven't surpassed it. That's probably almost as many as all nine previous albums put together. I'm not exactly sure what it is about War Eternal that makes it so addictive; certainly Arch Enemy didn't do an awful lot different compared to just about everything else they've ever done, but despite how many listens it may have taken I am confident in saying that this is the best thing the Swedish melodeath act have ever done. I'm not sure there's a moral to this little story-review but I guess the bottom line is that War Eternal isn't an album that deserves to be written off after just a listen or two. It is without a doubt the most surprising release I've heard this year so far. I just can't figure out how the fuck it happened, not after all this time.

Attribution: http://metaltube.freeforums.org/arch-enemy-war-eternal-t3708.html