Once more, our beloved Arch Enemy came to our city, first time thought with their new line-up. It was a good chance to go and check out Jeff Loomis (ex-Nevermore) and Alissa White-Gluz (ex-The Agonist) to see how they fit in Enemy’s new era.
The night started with Caelestia from Athens. A band that plays something like melodic death metal with many atmospheric parts and soprano vocals. 
Having released their first full-length “Beneath Abyss” earlier this year, they tried to warm up the audience. They came onto the stage along with a little girl that was wearing a bloodstained white dress and angel wings, just to lip-sync a few words from the album’s intro. I’ll skip that part. This is the second time I see them perform and still they are not my cup of tea. The harsh vocals also need a lot of improvement. The audience though showed them from time to time that they enjoyed the show. They also waved a French flag due to the tragedy that happened there these days. In the last song, the self-titled from their album, Andrew from Alterself came on stage to help with the vocals. They ended their set with a warm applause from the audience.
And now, to the main course. The intro “Khaos Overture” played and one by one, Arch Enemy took the stage. All eyes on Alissa and with “Yesterday Is Dead And 
Gone” the party had just begun. The band was on fire. “Burning Angel”, “War Eternal”, “Ravenous”, one great song after another. Every member of Arch Enemy is an excellent musician, no doubt about that. But Alissa was something else. I think that she will make all the fans forget about Angela Gossow very quick. Highly energetic, with better performance and better vocals from her predecessor. She knows exactly how the band depends on her. I believe that the Enemy found an excellent performer in who they can count on every night. She also gave a little speech about the victims in France, told us that her thoughts will be with them this night and dedicated the show to them. The night went on with old and new songs. They visited every album since “The Wages Of Sin” (Johan Liiva’s era of course was omitted) trying to satisfy most of the fans with the best songs of each album. When Jeff started playing the instrumental “Snow Bound”, the time had come for one more until the end of the night. And so it happened with “Nemesis”, an Enemy classic, being the last song of the show.
An overall excellent performance but, once more, not enough. They could have done way better than 90 minutes and 16 songs. But I don’t think that it will change, they have always been that way.
George Terzakis
Setlist: Yesterday Is Dead And Gone/Burning Angel/War Eternal/Ravenous/Stolen Life/My Apocalypse/You Will Know My Name/Bloodstained Cross/Under Black Flags We March/As The Pages Burn/Dead Eyes See No Future/Avalanhe/Dead Bury Their Dead/No Gods, No Masters/We Will Rise/Snow Bound/Nemesis
{gallery}ArchEnemy{/gallery}
