Arch Enemy - Deceivers (2022)^{Release ID: 39076}

It's hard watching a band that you once had so much favour with fall on hard times. Arch Enemy seem to have been on a descending spiral ever since Alissa White-Gluz took over as lead vocalist. Not by any fault of Alissa of course; she has filled in quite admirably for Angela Gossow. It is instead the compositions that have fallen flat in recent years. Arch Enemy have always been a band with some pedestrian song structures in the past, but at least they bothered to make each individual track sound distinct. Now it feels like Arch Enemy is trying to recapture a formula that made them popular fifteen years ago. I swear I heard callbacks to the singles on Doomsday Machine on this album at least half of the songs. Are "Nemesis", "My Apocalypse" and "Taking Back My Soul" good tracks? Yeah, but I want to hear 2022 Arch Enemy; this isn't 2006 anymore! 

Compositionally, Arch Enemy have always followed the Dragonforce approach of letting the lead guitar have a very heavy foot, but here they seem less sporadic, which is a nice touch as many of the leads/solos match the tempos/styles of the songs they are associated with. The vocals can seem forced at times thanks in large part to the opening track, "Handshake with Hell". After giving Alissa the opportunity to perform some clean singing here, it's never heard from again on the rest of the album. A little bit more variety here would go a long way for this album, and Arch Enemy moving forward. Overall, it's a solid enough of an Arch Enemy record. They took their time to release following 2017's disastrous Will to Power, and longtime fans will likely enjoy it. It sure as hell won't be deceiving anyone with it's sound, which is why I'm so mixed on it.

Best Songs: Handshake with Hell, The Watcher, Sunset over the Empire, One Last Time