Rise of the Tyrant

万众瞩目的大敌新专辑终于在2007年揭开神秘面纱继续引领旋死潮流，核心吉他手Michael Amott 评价了由Niklas Sundin (Dark Tranquillty 乐队吉他手)设计的封面：“这次我让Niklas Sundin 设计了新专辑的封面，他做得真棒，我对他的想象力和天赋以及与我交涉的耐心很吃惊."我们很早就开始做这个项目，但我们完成的工作和过去的有一些不同：更简洁的颜色，非常的阴暗和凶恶，非常棒。歌曲将是我们录制过的最极端的歌曲，Angela写的歌词和歌曲的基调完美的融合，所以我们把这首歌作为专辑的名字，封面很好的揭示了这首歌表现出的狂妄和残暴。

女主唱Angela Nathalie Gossow 的嗓音在这张专辑里显得更为原始和粗暴，上张专辑《Doomsday Machine 》明显听出是用了效果器，在这张专辑里，那种经过效果器处理的味道不见了，而且不大能听出来是个女人的吼声了。

吉他手Christopher Amott 完成了他的学业，他的回归使得这张专辑的技术性更强过Arch Enemy 以往的任何一张。而Michael Amott 以他擅长的手法制造了更优美更悦耳的旋律，这也是大敌最鲜明的特点。

稍稍有那么一点美中不足的是，这张专辑的每首歌曲区别不是很大，不像以前的专辑很容易就找出Nemesis 、We Will Rise 、Burning Angel 、The Immortal 、Beast Of Man 这样的“打榜歌曲”，得多听几遍才能感觉到这张专辑的出色之处就是因为每首歌都太优秀了！不过唱片中第一首歌曲Blood on Your Hands 也会让你感觉到大敌的一点点变化，不管这种变化在以后看来是好还是坏，我们都有理由一直期待下去的，不是吗？

by Eduardo Rivadavia

Heavy metal fans are a notoriously loyal bunch, so nothing drives them ape-shit quite like when their favorite bands "sell out" to commercial aspirations of any sort (or, Lucifer forbid, sign to a major label -- heck, even a major metal label like Roadrunner!), in which case these fans' thirst for revenge knows no bounds, and their sense of objectivity towards said band's music flies right out the window. Arch Enemy knows this all too well. Ever since Mike Amott's bunch replaced popular lead vocalist Johan Liiva with the largely unknown (and very female) Angela Gossow (who was later revealed to be romantically involved with Amott), they've endured incessant criticism from Liiva loyalists and shameless misogynists alike. Yes, the band also cleaned up their sound a bit, gradually moving from full-on death metal to a slightly more digestible death/thrash hybrid, but then so did most of their peers over the course of the ‘00s; and of course none of this was instigated by Gossow, whose ragged croaking was, if anything, even nastier than Liiva's, and her performance were just as dictated by Amott's authoritarian rule. No, if there's any worthy justification to this rampant negativity, it would be that, after making a strong statement with Gossow's debut on 2002's Wages of Sin, the band's next two offerings, Anthems of Rebellion (2003) and Doomsday Machine (2005), simply weren't very good (not that one could tell from the increased sales figures); so could the improvements achieved by 2007's much more focused Rise of the Tyrant finally cut Arch Enemy a little slack? Well, probably not, since not only did the band not scale back the melodic inclinations and simple but identifiable choruses permeating furiously thrashing standouts like "The Last Enemy," "In This Shallow Grave," and "Revolution Begins," they didn't oust the endlessly controversial Gossow, either, who was still (wo)manning the microphone. But for all those capable of concentrating on the music itself, instead of these various sideshows, there was plenty of very decent head banging to be had. It's still a far cry from representing a full-scale career redemption, or marking some miraculous return to Swedish-style death metal circa 1991 (sorry, Carnage and Carcass fans), but with so much mediocre metal saturating the globe, Arch Enemy still deliver a better proposition than most with Rise of the Tyrant.