In celebration of our 25th anniversary, we’re bringing you strictly limited merch bundles for every studio album we've ever released. It’s time for one of YOUR favorites: DOOMSDAY MACHINE (2005) - get your bundle now: http://bit.ly/AE25Years!
Enjoy part 6 of “Arch Enemy 25th anniversary - random fun facts & memories with Michael Amott”!
"I remember the writing sessions for this album being really good and our joint efforts spawned some strong material, songs like “Nemesis” and “My Apocalypse” flowed out us during the sessions in our rehearsal room and we eventually felt confident that we were ready for the next studio album.
After recording our previous effort in the U.K., the idea we had for this one was to record close to home in Sweden around our local area in the south west of Sweden with a local engineer/producer, Rickard Bengtsson. For the mix, we booked someone in Stockholm that had mixed RAMMSTEIN records. I have to say that I was personally a little skeptical about the choice of mixing engineer, but the rest of the guys were really into the idea so I went along with it, got to stay open minded about these things! The recording process was a little chaotic as it all took a lot longer than it should have and we ended up using three different studio locations simultaneously, in order to get it all done. Basically, for various reasons, it was just a complicated album to record - but we got it done in the end!
The album cover was made by Joachim Luetke, German artist, it’s one of my favorite covers we’ve had – then again I’m obsessed with skulls! At a festival in Spain a year later I met Peavy Wagner from the band RAGE and he told me he is the owner of the actual skull on our album cover, he explaind he has a very large collection of human skulls and bones… He’s the nicest guy though, I swear!
The search for a new guitarist had lead us quickly to Greek player Gus G, who signed up for the upcoming Ozzfest tour in the USA that was coming up and he also threw down a guest solo on “Taking Back My Soul”. Great guy and a fantastic player, we had some fun times on that tour! Gus couldn’t commit to the massive touring campaign we had lined up after Ozzfest, so I had to search for yet another guitarist and some people recommended Swedish guitarist Fredrik Åkesson from Swedish melodic rockers TALISMAN (since many years now he plays with OPETH). I already knew him a little bit and made the phone call. Fredrik came down to jam with us in the South of Sweden and proved to be great fit, very aggressive player with cool attitude. With this new lineup we started touring like maniacs around the planet. We did quite a few US tours in 2005/2006 including the Ozzfest and Megadeth’s Gigantour runs as well as a few headline and co-headline tours of our own. ARCH ENEMY had become a heavily touring band, spending less and less time back home in Sweden.
All the hard work we did on the road along with the efforts of our team at the label and management eventually payed off as it became one of our most sold albums, certainly in the North America. The last thing we did on the “Doomsday Machine” campaign was out first longer tour in South America, which was just really awesome and very wild!
Upon our return to Sweden we however had some tough decisions to make, as well as write and record the next album…"
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