Back home from a promotional trip to Japan, ARCH ENEMY's Angela Gossow (vocals) and Michael Amott (guitar) have issued the following report:

Angela Gossow:

‘Konnichiwa!

Christopher (Amott), Michael and myself are sitting on the flight back home from the Japan promotion trip and feeling slightly psychedelic from 20 hours of traveling. A good moment to write an update ;-)

So many things happen in the Arch Enemy camp every day… Posting artwork/new songs/live dates really is only the tip of the iceberg. We have just spent 5 days in Japan to promote Rise Of The Tyrant. We did plenty of photo shoots, interviews and radio ID’s… But the best thing was to be judges for the ‘headbanging contest’ at the ‘Heavy Metal Championship’. Imagine 20 kids freaking out to ‘Hang The Pope’ from NUCLEAR ASSAULT and a medley of Arch Enemy songs ('Ravenous', 'Nemesis', 'Dead Eyes See No Future', 'Bury Me An Angel', 'Beast Of Man', 'Enemy Within'…). Stacked up bodies doing windmills. Air guitar. One kid kept banging his head on our table. One came with a mask, the other with full corpse paint. Absolutely psychedelic. The lucky winner got one of Michael's LTD Ninja V guitars. We got all this action on video cam. In case we wonder if this ever really happened ;-)

‘We just got the confirmation we will co-headline the second day at the Loud Park 07 festival together with MARILYN MANSON this year. Cool!’

The next two weeks we will continue travelling around Europe for promotion, wedge in some festival appearances and shoot two videos before we head off to the US for the co-headline with Machine Head (‘The Black Tyranny Tour’). The feedback on ‘R.O.T.T’ so far has been amazing and despite our serious lack of sleep we feel energized and very excited. It will be so great to actually play these songs we are talking about so much at the moment. Practice what you preach, indeed.’

Michael Amott:

We had a very packed promotion schedule in Tokyo this time, as every-time! But it was carefully and planned and executed (that’s how they roll over there) – so it was a pleasurable experience… I tried to figure out if this was my 24th or 25th visit to the land of the rising sun – I’m not sure, but it was as much fun as all the times we’ve been out there. Japan is a special place for Arch Enemy, it’s where it all started for our band…and this special relationship continues to flourish, ten years down the line!

I would like to thank Tetsu and Ayako at Toy’s Factory records, Kazumi (translator), Masa Noda (photographer), all the journalists that interviewed us, and everyone else who made us feel welcome and so special in Japan on this trip!

A big thank you to everyone who helped out on the Young Guitar DVD filming, especially the Young Guitar staff and also our supporters from ESP (Guitar Ninjas!), CAPARISON (Check out Christopher's new white guitar!), RANDALL (The RM100 is a monster!) and PROVIDENCE (cables and amazing effects)! Me and Christopher demonstrated some of the riffs and solo’s from ‘R.OT.T – it was a good time.

The other amazing piece of Japan related Arch Enemy news is that we will co-headline the Loud Park 07 festival! We will play on the second day, on a very mixed bill which I think is awesome

We will also be playing in Osaka on October 22nd! We’ll be headlining the Loud Park Osaka with NWOBHM legends SAXON and one more TBA act opening! Unreal! We are all huge SAXON fans! Who isn’t?

We are very psyched to do the Loud Park thing again this year! We have played this years venue (Saitama Super Arena) previously back in 2004, when we supported IRON MAIDEN…(yes, it’s a rough life we lead, I know!). Anyhow, we are very much looking forward to playing extreme metal in this huge arena once again!

After coming home from Japan promotion, I immediately jumped on another flight to Stockholm and then another trip to Helsinki, Finland after that. I did a couple of days of interviews in these places and the reaction from the media is strong even in the north of Scandinavia, it seems as if no one can resist the Rise Of The Tyrant!"

For more pictures click here.