On blast: Arch Enemy

The new era gets off to a good start

In my year-end wrap up for 2025, I shared what can be a polarizing opinion among Arch Enemy fans. I said that I felt the Alissa White-Gluz era of the band was the strongest. I’m sure if I had a large enough audience on here, several people would have told me how dumb I am and how poor my musical taste is. But I stand by that statement.

I liked the Johan Liiva albums. I liked the Angela Gossow albums better (another opinion that wasn’t very popular at the time). But I thought the band was much more interesting musically with White-Gluz. Did they sacrifice some speed and heaviness? Yeah. But they also did a lot of things that were much more melodically interesting to me.

There’s a large contingent of metal fans, I believe, who would be perfectly happy with their favorite bands releasing the same album over and over. Some notable legends of the genre coughcoughSlayercoughcough have made very successful careers out of it. I’m not one of those fans. I generally don’t want my bands to go completely off the rails, but I can only listen to them do the same things over and over until I lose interest and wander away.

So, when Arch Enemy unveiled their latest song “To the Last Breath” last week, the first with new vocalist Lauren Hart, I wondered what we were going to get. I was immediately very pleased. The song opens with some old school melodic death speed and heaviness that definitely made the ears of fans of the older sound perk up. I’ve seen numerous comments about a “resurrection” of the band. We’ve established that I didn’t think it needed to be “resurrected,” but I’ve got to admit I was on board immediately.

Then, we get to the chorus, and I’m even more pleased. There’s the more melodic side of the band from the White-Gluz era that I loved. They’re not going to abandon that. Then, toward the end of the song, they start to blend in Hart’s cleans with her growls on the chorus, which is a very nice touch, too. It’s a great song all around.

Hart delivers searing, vicious growls, and she also seems to have some clean vocal chops, too. I know a lot of people don’t like it, but I was a fan of what they’ve done on the last few albums, mixing in the cleans. It’s hard to judge them based on the little of them we hear on this track, but I’ll look forward to hearing more.

I think “To the Last Breath” was a perfect track to introduce the new vocalist. It promises the fans who want them to go back in a heavier direction that they’re going to do more of that. It promises the fans of the more melodic side that they’re not going to abandon them, either. I’m excited to see where they go.