With their third opus, Burning Bridges, recently released in the States, it was a good time to tape Mr. Amott's brain for some insight into his metallic creations…

What separates Burning Bridges from the previous two Arch Enemy releases?
In my opinion and the band's opinion, this is by far our best effort, production-wise and songwriting-wise.  It just feels like it really clicked this time.  It's got a lot more going for it, in the songwriting department especially.  It's far more catchy than our previous two.  Just overall an improvement and that seems to be the overall reaction that we're getting from the media in Japan and Europe, where it has been out for a while already.

Was there a change in the song-writing process for this one?
All the music is written by myself and my brother Chris and that was the case in the past as well.  I don't know if there was much of a change, really.  We just sat down and tried to write the most catchy and brutal…the most interesting songs that we could come up with.  Just tried to focus on quality songwriting instead of…  On the Stigmata album, we got into a lot of the technical sort of stuff and maybe it was a little bit too much.  We're happy with the new approach that we've got, where we go more straight to the point.

Is that a difficult balance, between the technical side and the actual song itself?
I think it's got to be a really strong song.  To me, it doesn't matter what kind of music it is, as long as there is a good song there, that's the most important thing.  The same goes for the kind of music that we're playing:  it's got to be strong material, lots of hooks and catchiness, but also to keep it interesting for ourselves and for the fans, we throw in a lot of more progressive elements as well.

What are some of the lyrical themes covered on this album?
Overall, I would say the lyrics are a little more personal than in the past.  There are a few songs on there, like "Dead End Side," "Burning Bridges" and "Seed of Hate," that kind of is about life, relationships - lots of negative stuff.  I think it worked really well, writing these kinds of lyrics, with the new material.  It gave it a bit more depth.

How did you pick "Burning Bridges" as the album title?
The meaning is more on a personal level.  Basically, everybody burns a lot of bridges in their lives, with people and relationships, but you just have to move on, go forward.

Do you consider Arch Enemy to be your main band?
I've got two bands and I divide my time quite equally between them, which can be quite difficult with schedules and stuff.  Arch Enemy is definitely a real band, though - it's not a project or anything like that.  We're all committed to this band and we're going to be touring in Europe for six weeks in Sept/Oct, then we go to Japan and there is talk of bringing us over to the States with Nevermore possibly.  We're definitely going to do stuff to support this album, but I don't like to think, 'This is my main band,' or, 'That's may main band,' you know.  I'm really dedicated to both of my bands.

When you write songs, do you write them specifically for one band or the other?
Yeah, I think it's always quite obvious when a riff or a melody or song idea should be used for one of the bands.  The riffing style is quite different from each other.  They're both heavy bands, but the style of riffing and arranging is quite different.

Have you written anything that falls completely outside the scope of both bands?
Yeah, I've written stuff that's outside of that framework.  Sometimes I write stuff that is way to wimpy or whatever, like pretty little things on the acoustic guitar or whatever.  Things that will never be used probably.  But I usually find places to work in all my ideas, if they're any good.  That's the case with the song "Still the Wing" on the new album.  Me and Chris made this melody, the actual chorus of that song, that's a major chord progression instead of a minor chord progression, which is the normal thing for Arch Enemy and most metal bands.  We were like, maybe this sounds too positive, but we though, 'what the hell?'  It sounds good, why not use it?  I think we got away with it…  (laughs)

I read somewhere that you prefer emotional guitar-players to the technical ones.  Who would you consider some of the best emotional players?
I'm a big fan of guitar-players from the 70s and 80s.  I haven't really heard anything in the 90s that has blown me away completely.  I don't see myself as a totally original guitar-player or anything, but I'm inspired by some of these guitar-players and I put that into a new context.  I like melodic players, basically, mostly hard rock or heavy metal players.  Frank Marino, Michael Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, Gary Moore, John Sykes - very sort of traditional players.  I'm not really into jazz or fusion or anything like that.  I mean, you have Yngwie Malmsteen and you can't ignore his influence on everyone playing heavy metal and hard rock over the last fifteen, twenty years.  He started a new style of guitar playing.  I'm very much into older stuff, like Ritchie Blackmore with Deep Purple, stuff like that.  But a lot of that stuff can be quite boring music, because these people's careers go on and on and they don't write interesting material anymore.  Obviously, they are still fantastic players, but often I'll find myself listening to their older albums.  Everyone has a peak in their musical career and it's going to happen to me as well.  Oh, and you can't ignore Tony Iommi, especially for the riffing style.  I don't think there would have been any heavy metal without the kind of riffs that he came up with in the early 70s.

How old were you when you first started playing guitar?
I think I was probably about fourteen when I started playing.  I bought a guitar when I was fourteen, but I didn't start seriously playing until I was about sixteen.  I just had this guitar lying around at home and I learned to play a bit, but I couldn't find anybody else to play with, so I didn't really develop my playing.  From sixteen onward, I started finding people to play with and I started getting more and more into playing.

When did you decide to make it your career?
That just kind of happened, I didn't make that decision.  In the late 80s, I had my own death metal band here in Sweden, called Carnage.  We were very much into brutal death metal, everything being as brutal as possible.  We got a little deal and put an album out, but that wasn't a career, it was just our love for music that made us play.  Then I got an offer to play with Carcass after they put out Symphonies of Sickness, so I joined them and toured for the Symphonies of Sickness album, in the States and Europe.  Then later on, I recorded two albums with them.  Carcass were a band on the way up and the sales of that band made it into a career for me, I guess.  'Oh, we're getting paid now,' where as before I was working day jobs and stuff.  I've had that ambition, but I couldn't really see a career in it.  In the late 80s, there were now really successful bands in that style.  I couldn't see the kind of music I was playing becoming successful.  Headbanger's Ball and MTV over here was all like Warrant and Poison, there was no heavy stuff being played.  But then a few years later, the whole thing exploded and obviously death metal came to a peak around '92.  Grunge came along and suddenly it was okay to play downtuned and dirty.  I've worked in record stores and stuff between gigs when I haven't had enough money, but the last two years I've been able to just focus on the music, which is really nice.

You did an Iron Maiden cover ("Aces High").  Was it difficult to choose one particular song?
We did it for Japanese tribute album that only came out in Japan.  We got involved at a really late date on that album and the guy from the label really wanted us to do "Aces High" and we thought that would be cool, so we didn't really think too much about it.  We just went ahead and did it and it turned out pretty cool, actually.  It's never been available in Europe or the States…it might be some day, I don't know.

So is Japan your biggest market?
Yeah, that is definitely true for us.

What do you attribute that to?
I don't know…  We released an album called Black Earth in '96, the first Arch Enemy album, and it did okay over there.  It sold like 10,000 or 11,000.  We went over there and supported Cathedral for three shows and that was really cool and seemed to go down really well.  Then we released Stigmata over there and that sold 20,000 and we went over and toured for that one, so it's just been growing.  The new album came out in May over there and has already done 30,000.  With 30,000 albums sold, that makes Arch Enemy the biggest extreme metal band in the Far East, which is pretty cool, if you don't count like Sepultura.  But we sell a lot more than a band like Fear Factory or Machine Head in Japan.  But that's the only place in the whole world where that will ever happen!  (laughs)  I think the reason is just that Arch Enemy embraced the metal of the 80s that they still love so much over there.  We just incorporate traditional heavy metal guitarwork into this death metal sound.  Death metal has never really made it big over there, so it's still rather fresh to them.  We have a lot of guitar solos and me and my brother are both pretty well respected as players over there.  We have a lot of guitar deals and we're giving lessons in the guitar magazines - a very different situation than here at home. (laughs)

Do you get treated differently by the fans and the press in Japan?
Yeah, both the fans and the press are really, really different over there, compared to Europe.  The fans are a lot more into it - they know all the lyrics, all the music.  Like when we play the melody lines and the solos, the crowd will be singing along to that.  They're just more dedicated.  They know everything about you.  If they get into something, they totally get into it.  At a show, there might be a thousand kids, and they are all totally into Arch Enemy or whatever.  But they demand a lot as well.  You just can't give them shit (laughs).  You can't go over there and play like shit and fuck up, because they notice all that.  The journalism is totally different from the Western journalism, the metal press anyway.  It's 100% focused on music.  Over here, the bigger magazines like Metal Hammer and Kerrang! are not focused on the music.  Like, there could be an interview in Metal Hammer or Kerrang! over here with Marilyn Manson and it could be five pages long, but not have one question about the music.  But in Japan, the big magazines know that the fans want to know about the music and they want to know EVERYTHING about the music.  They want to know about the recording, what influenced you…so in a way, it's more like the underground press in the States and Europe.  They are genuinely into music, instead of like, 'Let's sell a lot of copies by talking about somebody wants to rape a child on stage' or whatever.

How involved are you in the business side of things and have you done pretty well in terms of not getting ripped off?
I've been ripped off like everybody else, but it's been okay.  We just signed a management deal with a big company over called Sanctuary, and they do like Helloween and Iron Maiden, stuff like that.  So hopefully things will get more organized now.

Are you interested in science-fiction, in terms of books and movies?
Yeah, I love that kind of stuff, especially older science-fiction movies, like late 60s and early 70s.  Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, Omega Man, 2001, Rollerball - I love that kind of vision of the future that they had then.  Actually, most of these films are like set in the year 2000 or whatever and…that's like next year. (laughs)  When I watch movies like that I feel a bit fooled really, because it's a future that is never going to happen.  We're never going to have those cool, huge-screen TVs covering the whole wall and all this cool furniture.  (laughs)  We're not going to wear these really cool suits and stuff.  It's sad, it really is… (laughs)

It seems like those movies were a lot more imaginative than current sci-fi films.
Oh definitely.  The whole vibe then was more imaginative.  The concepts that they had then were really, really cool.  A lot more of the moves and books from that time that were science-fiction related were a lot more original.  It's not a like a bunch of aliens that are going to come and kill everyone on earth, like Independence Day - that really sucks.  For me, that's not a science-fiction movie, it's a Hollywood action movie that happens to be set in space.  I like movies like Rollerball, that have a really dark sort of atmosphere.  They were a lot more thoughtful and intelligent.  But I don't think a movie like that would do well commercially today, because it's too dark for people.