Everything Everything - Arch Enemy

New Everything Everything. The wait is up. Every time this band return it flares straight up and leaves a smokey crater in the ground (‘Can’t Do’, ‘Distant Past’, ‘Schoolin’). Tonight is no different. The track’s called ‘Arch Enemy’, and it’s another non-stop barnstormer. It’s not their first single back of course. You’ll have heard ‘In Birdsong’, the first new music from the band since 2018’s ‘A Deeper Sea’ EP, with its quicksilver, beguiling beauty. Though not originally the first single from the album, the band wanted to be “responsive to the changed landscape”, and it emerged as the “appropriate song to reappear with”. Like 'Tin (The Manhole)' and 'No Reptiles' before it, 'In Birdsong' cuts straight to the heart of what Everything Everything are about. It’s both a coda to what came before (2018’s ‘A Deeper Sea’) and a drum-roll for what’s next… ‘Arch Enemy’ too is classic EE. Full of melody, full of ideas – it’s perfectly focused pop music. Interestingly though, that core idea in ‘In Birdsong’ carries through. It’s inspired by a theory from psychologist Julian Jaynes: imagine what it must have felt like to be the first self-aware human, as the higher brain and lower brain fuses together. That's an Everything Everything album just waiting to happen. “It’s about your dark side,” says frontman Jonathan Higgs, “how you have self-will, how you decide whether you’re going to follow your own path… I felt like there’s loads of stuff that this one theory sparked in me, that loads of ideas could come out of this”. The pieces are starting to fall into place for Album Five, dropping in August. It’s called ‘Re-Animator’, John Congleton’s on board (grammy-tier producer for St Vincent, Angel Olsen, Bombay Bicycle Club). I am excited.