Arch Enemy - Blood Dynasty (Album Review)

Arch Enemy - Blood Dynasty
Released: March 28, 2025

Line Up

Michael Amott // guitars
Alyssa White-Gluz // vocals
aniel Erlandsson // drums
Sharlee D’Angelo // bass
Joey Concepcion // guitars

Online

Facebook
‍Instagram
‍TikTok  

Arch Enemy return with a new LP Blood Dynasty. It follows the reasonably well received Deceivers and has been previewed by no less than four singles. Those singles indicated that Arch Enemy were on a very similar track to their past, particularly as this is the fourth record with Alyssa White-Gluz. At times they settle into very familiar song structures that are punctuated by Alyssa‘s clean vocals. However there’s enough here to indicate that there’s still some life in the band yet, particularly with the clean sung, French song ‘Vivre Libre’, and a couple of songs that have more than a passing influence from Judas Priest.

At its best, Blood Dynasty does a great job of applying some classic influences to the traditional Arch Enemy sound. Book ended with a couple of classics, ‘Dream Stealer’ and ‘Liars and Thieves’, the album works best when they change things up a little bit. There’s a noticeable Judas Priest style to the chorus of ‘Dream Stealer’ that makes it instantly memorable, while ‘Liars and Thieves’ is built on a riff that sounds an awful lot like Motörhead, only to open up with a bridge that drifts the band into melodic power metal. There’s also a brief drum solo and it’s these kinds of changes that are far more interesting than some of the other things that happened across the album. ‘March of the Miscreants’ also has that power metal vibe to it particularly with some cracking guitar solos while the title track, ‘Blood Dynasty’, is a little more progressive than you might expect despite still sounding very much like an Arch Enemy tune.

Much of the album though is taken up with very familiar melo-death tropes in the Arch Enemy brand. Band leader Michael Amott knows what brought Arch Enemy a legion of fans. You know what you’re getting as soon as a song like ‘Illuminate the Path’, ‘A Million Suns’ or ‘Don’t Look Down’ start playing. They’ve got great hooks, some great riffs but they also bleed a little bit into each other and feel a little bit disposable from the current set list due to their similarity to lots of their previous material. The highlight of this kind of generic material is ‘Paper Tiger’, a song that goes damn hard in the style of ‘Ravenous’ and similar hits.

There are signs though that the band aren’t quite willing to just churn out the same old thing album after album. ‘Vivre Libre’ is sung in French by Alyssa and clean sung the whole way through with an awesome melody guitar line that stands out as a different kind of ballad. It’s a left field choice as a cover, the original is by French band Blaspheme, but it still fits the band aesthetics, which often include lyrics appealing to revolution and standing together but in a way that feels a bit fresh. The fact that this wasn’t one of the album singles signals that they’re not trying to sell out but rather trying something a bit different without changing direction. 

I really enjoyed Deceivers when it came out because I felt like it was energetic and had a bunch of songs that would work well live. Blood Dynasty continues in a similar vein but also feels a little bit same to everything they’ve done since White-Gluz joined. That said, there’s a couple of songs that are worth checking out and you can be damn sure that the guitar playing is brilliant and precise and that there’s plenty of big hooks to sing along with. Maybe Arch Enemy is too much of a recognisable brand for the band to disrupt the formula too much but when they do, it does make for more exciting moments (at least on record) and it’ll sound massive in the bigger venues they now play.

Rating: 7.5 / 10
‍Blood Dynasty is out now via Savage Messiah Music // Century Media Records. Stream it here. 
Review by KJ Draven (Instagram & Threads)