Alissa White-Gluz says that she is continuing to write and record material for her upcoming solo album. It was announced in September 2016 that the ARCH ENEMY frontwoman had signed a deal with Napalm Records for the release of her first solo disc, which will feature contributions and collaborations with past and present members of ARCH ENEMY and KAMELOT, as well as MISFITS guitarist Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein. Speaking to Music Feeds at this past weekend's Download festival in Melbourne, Australia, Alissa stated about her plans to issue a solo album (see video below): "I never had this idea, 'I wanna be a solo artist.' I don't — I like my band — but, as many of you know, Sharlee [D'Angelo, bass] and Mike [Amott, guitar] have SPIRITUAL BEGGARS, Jeff [Loomis, guitar] has solo music that he writes, and Daniel [Erlandsson, drums] has other projects as well. So all of us have side projects, [and] this is sort of a side project for me to do when ARCH ENEMY does inevitably take a break at some point. We always like to keep our brains brewing, and I think it's healthy also to explore another side and not just have it only focused one hundred percent on ARCH ENEMY. So that's something that I'm doing, basically, whenever I have time. So I'm in the process of writing and demoing right now, and I'm collaborating with a bunch of friends who are also peers in other bands. I'm gonna record that and release it on Napalm Records. And I'm just looking forward to getting that out there too." Alissa said in a 2017 interview that the idea for a solo project came about as a suggestion from ARCH ENEMY's former lead singer Angela Gossow, who has been managing the band'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. "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. Alissa went on to say that her solo effort will contain 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." Alissa also revealed that her solo album will feature contributions from 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".
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