With former frontwoman Angela Gossow leaving the band in 2014, and uncertainty in the guitarist department since the departure of Christopher Amott, it was almost a foregone conclusion that more changes in the Arch Enemy camp lay ahead. Having already released War Eternal (Century Media) with Gossow’s replacement, former The Agonist singer Alissa White-Gluz, the band’s new album Will To Power (Century Media) marks the full-length début of former Nevermore guitar maestro Jeff Loomis. Although a hugely popular choice among fans, it does seem a little strange that lead guitarist Michael Amott should then come out so publicly, saying on one hand how perfectly Loomis fits in the band, yet on the other stating how their two styles simply don’t mesh.
With Arch Enemy basically being Amott’s baby, it’s understandable he would want to keep things moving a certain way, but to muzzle a guitarist of Loomis’s undeniable talent doesn’t exactly scream musical growth, or a healthy and productive long-term arrangement. However, with one noticeable change already evident on this new album, there may actually have been some method to his madness. As the album progresses, there’s a subtle but noticeable increase in clean vocals. A word here, a line there, but it’s not until ‘Reason To Believe’ that the band almost completely move away from their standard blueprint just enough to step into the world of Melodeath balladry. Managing to keep reasonably far away from the usual clichéd heavy verse/sung chorus routine, ‘Reason to Believe’ may not be the best song of its type, but at least after ten albums, it’s certainly something different.
As for the rest? Well, after beginning with the standard instrumental intro ‘Set Flame to the Night’, ‘The Race’ immediately punches the record into life. All riffs, drums, and roars, this is balls out Arch Enemy neck-wrecking brutality. With your attention sufficiently grabbed, ‘Blood in the Water’ takes a slightly different approach as it lashes you with groove and some familiar guitar melodies. Fans will already be familiar with ‘The World is Yours’ and ‘The Eagle Flies Alone’, and both happily tick all the boxes required for Arch Enemy singles. More roars, more riffs, more melodies, and more ridiculously rampant guitar solos than you can shake a stick at.
After the aforementioned ‘Reason to Believe’, ‘Murder Scene’, and ‘First Day in Hell’ mark a swift return to more familiar territory, while the gentle and slightly discordant ‘Saturnine’ is basically just another fairly pointless Arch Enemy instrumental interlude. The fairly lengthy ‘Dreams of Retribution’ features some nice keyboards but also suffers from a bad case of over-familiarity, ‘My Shadow and I’ steals a riff from Giorgio Moroder‘s score to Scarface, and closing track ‘A Fight I Must Win’ repeats the theme of self-empowerment heard many, many times throughout the album, but is really only memorable for its completely unsubtle lifting of the chorus to ‘All Night Long’ by Rainbow.
Starting well, peaking in the middle, but then pretty much falling off a cliff shortly after, Will to Power is played with typically clinical precision and virtuoso levels of technical ability but lacks the overall strength of many of their previous releases. Amott says that Loomis’s style would have clashed with his own, and he may very well be right, but let’s hope he has a rethink in the near future, as that combination would also have undoubtedly made for a much more interesting record.
7.0/10
GARY ALCOCK