THE BEAST

Alissa White-Gluz's upcoming solo album will feature collaborations with a member of KAMELOT and at least one of her bandmates in ARCH ENEMY.

The ARCH ENEMY frontwoman says that the idea for a solo project came about as a suggestion from the band's former lead singer Angela Gossow, who has been managing ARCH ENEMY's career for almost a decade and also oversees Alissa's personal affairs.

"[Angela] was, like, 'Well, you need something. You need something that you can do, because I know you're a workaholic and you're not gonna be able to just sit there like this waiting for the next ARCH ENEMY tour,'" Alissa told France's Duke TV (see video below). "And she's totally right — I needed something else to be able to work on. And also, I have a lot of ideas that maybe don't sound like ARCH ENEMY and it would be kind of silly to just force them into ARCH ENEMY."

According to White-Gluz, her debut solo album will be released under the ALISSA banner because she wanted to "keep it simple" and "make it very clear who it is and what it is." In order to make the disc, Alissa "did a huge life overhaul," which included building a studio and investing a lot of time and money into learning how to engineer and record, program drums and improving at playing guitar. "Of course, on the album itself we're gonna have real musicians playing all of these things, but in terms of just getting the style down and the songwriting, it's something that I need to start on my own," she explained.

Half of Alissa's solo effort has been written so far over the past year, and it contains some musical surprises. "It doesn't really sound like ARCH ENEMY — it's pretty different — but I think it's pretty cool," she said. "For example, a song that I'm writing with Oliver [Palotai, keyboards] from KAMELOT doesn't sound like KAMELOT and it doesn't sound like ARCH ENEMY, but it's members of both."

Former NEVERMORE guitarist Jeff Loomis, who joined ARCH ENEMY in late 2014, didn't have any of his songwriting ideas included on the latter band's new album, "Will To Power", but will play a prominent role on Alissa's upcoming disc.

"Jeff didn't write with Michael [Amott, ARCH ENEMY guitarist and main songwriter], because Michael was already writing so well with Daniel [Erlandsson, ARCH ENEMY drummer] that we just actually had too many ideas," White-Gluz told France's Loud TV in a separate interview (see video below). "But all of Jeff's ideas are really good and I've heard them and they're gonna be released, so people will hear them… Jeff is gonna be one of my collaborators on my solo project, because how can you say no to that? [Laughs]"

"Will To Power" will be released on September 8 via Century Media. Co-produced by Amott and Erlandsson, the album was mixed and mastered by longtime collaborator and friend Jens Bogren (OPETH, AT THE GATES, DIMMU BORGIR). Via Blabbermouth