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Let’s talk about Arch Enemy – or, more specifically, let’s talk about Arch Enemy‘s 1999 lineup that got together for some Japanese shows and even some new music a few years back. But I’m not sure that many people noticed that that happened.

So let’s start from the top. Way before Arch Enemy was headlining sizable venues around the world and releasing singles guaranteed to be played on metal radio stations, Arch Enemy was among Sweden’s early crop of classic melodic death metal bands.

Arch Enemy was formed in 1995 by guitarist Michael Amott, who had already made a name for himself in bands like Carnage and Carcass a few years prior to forming Arch Enemy. Carnage is particularly important here in that they were one of the early bands that helped pioneer the Swedish death metal sound and featured future Arch Enemy vocalist Johan Liiva.

Arch Enemy released their debut album Black Earth in 1996 with the lineup of Amott and his brother Christopher Amott on guitars, Liiva on vocals, and drummer Daniel Erlandsson. According to Michael Amott in a 2022 interview with MetalTalk, Black Earth was originally released in Sweden, but got licensed to the Japanese label Toy’s Factory for release in Japan.

In that interview, Amott said: “It came out on a very small label of a friend who, at the time, put it out in Sweden. But what happened was that he got it licensed to a Japanese label, and that label really built up the band there. We started touring there. We were the first melodic death metal band that played in Japan. We became the biggest and remained the biggest band of that style over there. It’s been a very long relationship in that territory.”

It’s important to remember that Arch Enemy really got their start in Japan despite being in Sweden, as that’s important to the story here. Arch Enemy had their first major breakthrough in 1998 on Japan’s MTV Rocks! TV program, and were invited to tour the country and sign a new deal with Toy’s Factory Records shortly thereafter.

Alongside being signed to Toy’s Factory, Arch Enemy then signed to international record label Century Media Records in 1998 and went on to release their album Stigmata with the revised lineup of bassist Martin Bengtsson and drummer Peter Wildoer of Darkane, as Erlandsson had left Arch Enemy at that time.

After Stigmata, Erlandsson came back and current Arch Enemy bassist Sharlee D’Angelo joined. That classic lineup of the Amott brothers, Liiva, D’Angelo, and Erlandsson released their final record together named Burning Bridges in 1999. Though if you want to get really technical about it, the real final effort from this particular lineup was the live album Burning Japan Live 1999, originally released exclusively in Japan by Toy’s Factory.

Arch Enemy split with Liiva in 2000 and replaced him with long-time vocalist Angela Gossow, while Christopher Amott left in 2005 – though he would go on to rejoin Arch Enemy between 2007 and 2012.

Liiva spoke a little about his departure from Arch Enemy during a 2015 interview with LoudTV.net, saying, “I actually wasn’t that angry. I was just kind of shocked and kind of disappointed because I wasn’t expecting it. But you have to just deal with it and accept what happened. Then a few years later, I realized, ‘okay, this is what it’s like. It’s the music business.’ Michael Amott wants to make a living from his music. He wants to make the band like that. And honestly, at the end, I wasn’t putting too much of my energy into the band. I had so many other things on my agenda, unfortunately. So it was like a mixture of all these things.”

And that was it for a long time. Arch Enemy went on to have a very successful career. Liiva fronted a band called Hearse for about a decade, and Christopher Amott joined bands like Armageddon, Dark Tranquillity, and even had his own solo project for a little while there.

Then out of nowhere in 2016, Arch Enemy‘s 1999 lineup returned as a new project called Black Earth. Black Earth was set to tour Japan that May, playing only their old material – only those first three albums – with Michael Amott commenting at the time: “It’s very awesome to finally announce this new project, Black Earth, which will perform Arch Enemy‘s first three albums’ material live on stage. Old school 90s lineup. An extensive tour of Japan in May, announced today.”

And so that tour happened. Black Earth played seven shows in Japan from May 17 to May 27, 2016. All the shows were 22 songs long, and were, like Amott said, exclusively from those first three Arch Enemy records. And that included a cover of Iron Maiden‘s “Aces High” which Arch Enemy had originally covered back in the 90s and was included as both a bonus track on Black Earth the album and on the 2019 compilation Covered in Blood.

Here’s where things start to get pretty interesting for Black Earth. In 2017, Black Earth released their live album 20 Years of Dark Insanity: Japan Tour 2016. The album was recorded at Shibuya Club Quattro in Tokyo, Japan on May 25, 2016, and came with both a DVD and CD version of the show. Though the CD version led off with a brand new studio song called “Darkness Has Returned”, which was the first song this particular lineup had written and recorded together since 1999.

And if you’ve never heard that track, go find it. It’ll have any fan of old school Arch Enemy absolutely salivating. It’s top-tier Swedish death metal, and Johan Liiva sounds even better than he did on the first three Arch Enemy records — which is not a shot at his work on the first three Arch Enemy records. I really love those, but he sounds really good on this song all those years later.

After the 2016 tour, Black Earth also played a show at Japan’s Loud Park 17 festival in October 2017 as a secret act. That 2017 festival would be all we’d hear from Black Earth until 2019, when they would announce another brief tour of Japan, celebrating 20 years of Arch Enemy‘s Burning Bridges record. And just in case you’re trying to keep track here, Black Earth has now toured Japan twice — in 2016 and 2019 — as well as played that secret show at Loud Park 2017. There have been no appearances outside Japan, and unfortunately, there never have been.

In a 2018 interview with Marunouchi Muzik Magazine, Liiva said that Black Earth was surprised at how well the 2016 tour and 2017 Loud Park performance went, saying, “We are all very excited and looking forward to be doing this tour.” This tour being the 2019 one that was coming up at the time. “The first tour we did with Black Earth in 2016 exceeded all expectations. Loud Park 2017, as a secret act, was so much fun as well. We woke up at six in the morning, and then about four hours later, we were on stage, and honestly very surprised that so many people showed up at such an early time. It was a fantastic time and such an amazing response from all the fans.”

In that same 2018 interview, Liiva was also asked about a potential Black Earth album, which he basically said was not in the cards at the time. “There are no plans for any album at the moment, because of various reasons. The other guys are very busy with Arch Enemy. Chris has his life in the USA, and me being busy at my work, also. This is more like a project we enjoy and have a lot of fun doing together. Still, Arch Enemy is priority number one, and to do something like this would mean it to get more serious. But who knows what will happen in the future.”

Though one more very interesting thing happened in 2019. Before the Japanese tour that the band had coming up at the time, Black Earth released a new compilation called Path of the Immortal. The compilation featured remastered versions of songs from their early albums, plus another two new songs called “Burn on the Flame” and “Life Infernal”.

So if you’re keeping track at home, this means Black Earth has now released three new songs. We got three new songs from Arch Enemy‘s 1999 lineup. We basically got an EP’s worth of new classic Arch Enemy, and it was unfortunately hidden across a live album and a compilation that were only released on physical media in Japan.

And I’m not being hyperbolic about that either. Both the 2017 live album and Path of the Immortal have never been released on any format, digital or physical, outside of Japan.

But why Japan? Why not take this to stages around the world? Arch Enemy is plenty popular, and their early material is also still pretty popular among metal fans. Why did Black Earth only tour and release music in Japan? Former Arch Enemy vocalist and band manager Angela Gossow explained in a 2019 interview with Roppongi Rocks that the band simply wanted to do right by the country that they originally got big in.

“The reason for the Black Earth band only performing in Japan is quite simple. The members have a limited time in their busy schedules to do this, and they chose to perform exclusively in Japan so far, due to the fact that Japan is where they had their first success in the 90s with the first three Arch Enemy albums and tours. With the exclusive Black Earth concerts and material that is released in Japan, they wish to say thank you for the longtime support of the Japanese fans for a journey that has lasted over 20 years now.”

And unfortunately that’s where the story for Black Earth seems to end, or at least has ended since 2019. The band played their 2019 Japan tour and, outside the occasional post about merch on their social media or anniversary posts about their Japan shows, Black Earth has been completely dead quiet.

I actually reached out to Michael Amott on Instagram to see if Black Earth had any plans for maybe this year or next year, or anything coming up at all. And sadly, there are none. To quote Michael himself: “Hi Greg, yeah, that’s right. The last thing we did with the Black Earth project was a 10 date tour across Japan in 2019. No further plans for it at the moment, unfortunately, as it was extremely enjoyable.”

But hey, at least we got three new songs out of Black Earth. I just hope that those releases make their way to being worldwide releases someday—or at the very least, you know, hit all streaming services sometime, eventually, because they’re good. I mean, the live album sounds great, the new songs are great, and can’t hurt to listen to some old remastered Arch Enemy that sounds pretty good these days, right?