ARCH ENEMY's MICHAEL AMOTT Talks Gear At NAMM

ARCH ENEMY/CARCASS guitarist Michael Amott was interviewed by Jose Mangin, on-air personality and program director for Sirius XM and guest host of MTV2's "Headbangers Ball", at this year's NAMM (National Association Of Music Merchants) show, which was held January 14-17, 2010 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. The chat, which originally aired as part of Dean Guitars' "Live from NAMM" webcast, can be viewed below.

In a recent interview with The Aquarian Weekly, Michael Amott stated about ARCH ENEMY's decision to re-record older material for the "The Root Of All Evil" album, "We started talking about doing something like this three, four years ago. The initial idea came from the fans really, they kept asking us if we'd ever consider re-recording some of the older material, this time with Angela [Gossow] on vocals. At first, I couldn't see the appeal of doing it, but as time passed and more and more people were asking about it, we decided to give it a shot, and I must say that it was a fun project. I found it quite refreshing to go in the studio and record the songs and make them sound fresh and exciting."

When asked how faithful the band wanted the "Root" CD to be true to the original recordings, Amott said, "We weren't that concerned with staying 100 percent true to the original versions. These are new interpretations of the old songs. If anyone wants to hear the original recordings of the songs, they can listen to the old albums. We wanted to to give our favorites from those early albums an 'extreme makeover' and make them harder and tougher. We wanted the songs to sound like ARCH ENEMY right here and now, a worthy tribute to the first chapter in the band's history."

On the topic of when fans could expect to hear new ARCH ENEMY material, Amott said, "I've written four song ideas that we've been jamming on, and I know that the other guys have ideas as well and I look forward to hearing them. We don't typically write a lot on the road so the songwriting process will pick up once we get off the road, I hope. The idea is that we'll be continuing to write and arrange new material throughout 2010 and we plan go back in the studio again at the end of the year and see what we come up with. Ideally, we'd like to release a new ARCH ENEMY album in 2011. Our last album of new material, 'Rise Of The Tyrant', came out back in September 2007, so that'd be a good time in-between records. I'm very much looking forward to getting into the creative phase of writing and recording again."