Angela, thanks for calling in. It’s great to hear from you. How have things been going?

Actually, we’ve been in Russia and Japan and a bunch of Asian countries. We played China, Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Jakarta. We’re playing Australia and New Zealand. We had to apply for about 15 visas! There are so many embassies and some we had to go to in person. A lot of people don’t realize we’re not entering as tourists – we have to apply for working visas. It’s a huge puzzle to put together.

That’s true. Most of us don’t realize what goes into a band touring the world and what all is involved.

People always ask ‘How do you make it through those tours?’ Being on the road – after all that crazy preparation – we can just be musicians. That’s the simple life! The not-so-simple life is before the tour – getting it together, knowing what equipment is going to be at each show. You have to think ahead for weeks. Every show and every country is different. Once I’m on the road it’s like a huge fucking mountain is taken off my heart and my chest and I can breathe again!

Tell me a little about The Root Of All Evil. You all picked tracks from the band’s first three records and re-recorded them with the current lineup. How did you decided on what tracks to re-record?

The thing for us is unifying the old and the new Arch Enemy. I don’t think a lot of newer Arch Enemy fans haven’t really been looking into the back catalog and really paying attention to it. We wanted to redo the songs we wanted to play live. That’s how we approached it. The first three albums is 35 songs we could do in theory. We picked 11 of the strongest songs that would go over well live and fit into our set. We listened to the tracks and decided which ones would crush live.

When the idea first came up to re-record those songs, were you hesitant at all since you are the “new” voice to those tracks?

Yeah. I’ve been in the band longer than Johann Liiva (original vocalist) was. I’ve been in Arch Enemy for eight years. I think he was in the band for five years. We’re not trying to make people think we’re erasing the past. I approached it like covering my favorite band. That’s why we didn’t record every song. We didn’t want to replace anything; we just wanted to add to Arch Enemy’s repertoir in 2009 really. It’s not as exciting as recording a new Arch Enemy album. I would’ve rather had the band spend time working on new songs but we’ve had this idea for a long time. It was a project that we felt now had it’s time and place.

How long did it take altogether to pick the songs, go in the studio and release the record?

It’s not like writing a new record. You don’t have the whole self-loathing, self-hating and self-questioning phase where you scrap everything and start over from scratch. We recorded all the songs in about three weeks. If we’d done it all in one go we could’ve probably done it in two weeks. We did record bits and pieces here and there. We just did it in between tours, whenever we felt like it. You always learn something from every album. We learned how to just enjoy recording again. There was no pressure involved. That was nice.

I was just thinking that the time in the studio had to be a lot more relaxed for this record.

That’s what we want to try and bring into the next recording. We’re trying to keep it a bit nicer. We put ourselves under immense pressure all the time. We want to get rid of that for the next album. We’ve learned to take it a little bit easier on ourselves!

The packaging and extras for The Root Of All Evil are really cool – you can get it in CD, vinyl, digital download. How important is the packaging in your mind?

When you release an album these days only the core fans are going to actually buy the product. If you actually get somebody to pay real money for it, it’s just nice to have some extras. This release is kinda old school. It includes a patch, which is kinda old school. It’s just a small way of saying thank you to the people that have been there for so long. The vinyl is just a nice piece of artwork. The people that still buy vinyl really need to be rewarded! We still approach the artwork the way we did years ago. We put a lot of work into it. We make sure it always reflects the music, too.

A lot of fans may be wondering if you’ve been working on any new material. What do you say to them?

It’s none of your business! No – sometimes I want to say that! (laughs) We’ve been writing since 2007. When we’re on tour we have this little recording device. It’s kick ass. We record a performance and put it into a laptop. We’ve been using it for the past two years. We’ve got about five or six completed songs and a ton of riffs. We have shows booked into 2010. We’re going to sit down and do the next record in Autumn of 2010.

Angela – again I appreciate you taking time for this. What would you like to say to our readers and all the Arch Enemy fans out there?

Enjoy life. Go to a lot of metal shows. Support art and artists and stay true fucking metal!