Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Lauren Hart, a new member of Arch Enemy, talked about her debut performance with the band on March 27, 2026, in Beijing, China, in an interview with Germany’s Metal Hammer magazine, as per Blabbermouth.
It was a dream come true for me and the start of a new future. And it somehow connected with the child in me that loved Arch Enemy from [2001’s] ‘Wages Of Sin’ [album]. And it was just all that going on in my mind and yet none of it as well because I was so in the moment. And it was so overwhelming, and the crowd response was amazing. I was on another planet. I was so happy.
Lauren made this statement on how the Arch Enemy followers have reacted to her thus far.
I received a lot of love from everyone, and I was really taken aback by that. I think in my mind I thought it would take a while to really… I thought I’d have to really work and earn that, as it’s really difficult when changes are made. But I feel like the reception immediately right away was so positive and everyone was so welcoming and wam in the audience. And I was very happy — very happy, and a little surprised, actually. It was instantly amazing.
Lauren responded as follows when asked if she could recall the first time she heard Arch Enemy‘s music.
It was when ‘Wages Of Sin’ came out. I was hanging around my usual group of friends who were showing me metal and all that, and they were all guitar players. And when they put on the CD, I’m, like, ‘God, he sounds… That singer, he sounds great.’ [And they told me], ‘That’s not a guy. That’s a girl.’ … I had no idea women could scream — no idea at that time. And they had a band at the time, and they were just jamming their stuff, and I would beg them to let me try. And that’s eventually how I started screaming.
Michael Amott, the guitarist and creator of Arch Enemy, explained why the band decided to release the track “To The Last Breath” in February to introduce Lauren to its audience.
I think one thing that was key there was to have a new song that you can just show people, ‘This is what we’re gonna do. We’re not doing this anymore, but we’re doing this, and it sounds like this. It looks like that.’ And I think it was important to have a song that was very aggressive and melodic and very good. It needed to be very good.
“I had been working on some material previously, so I kind of reached into my catalog of songs that we haven’t released and then we fine-tuned this one into what it is now, what it became, everything happened so fast that we didn’t have time to record… Lauren did her vocals back home, basically, in the States. So she sent her first material, the vocal tracks, and they sounded very amazing. So that was the point where I was, like, ‘Okay, this could work.’ So we hadn’t even met in person. We had only done Zoom calls before that.
Michael responded as follows when asked when fans might anticipate hearing more new music from Arch Enemy.
We’ve always been a band that we tour and then we go away and we write a new album, and we slowly put everything together. Then we’re in the studio, and then we announce a new single and that we have a whole album. Right now we don’t have a whole album recorded, so it’s a unique situation for us. We’re working on more new stuff as well. We had a two-month break now, so we managed to work on a few things. So there’s something new coming, but I think we’re gonna release that after the summer. And then we’re going back to the studio again when we have time off. So we’re doing it in these sessions… We’re not doing a full album, but it’s all gonna become an album at some point. ‘Cause now we’re enjoying being on the road.
Upcoming shows:
