Angela Gossow

Angela Gossow — born in Germany in 1974 — was Arch Enemy's vocalist between 2000 and 2014, and the musician who changed what was expected of a female voice in extreme metal. When she joined the band, melodic death metal had no women vocalists in that register. Gossow did not sing clean or alternate between timbres: she used growls and screams exclusively, with a power and articulation that made the singer's gender indistinguishable on record. That dismantled in practice the assumption that women in metal occupied the role of lyric soprano — the format Nightwish and Within Temptation had established in the same decade. Her voice is on the records that took Arch Enemy to the top of the genre: Wages of Sin (2001), Anthems of Rebellion (2003), Doomsday Machine (2005), Rise of the Tyrant (2007) and Khaos Legions (2011). These are the albums on which the band stopped being a niche Swedish project and became a festival name worldwide. In 2014 she left the microphone by her own decision and took over Arch Enemy's management — she became the band's manager, naming Alissa White-Gluz as her successor. It is a rare transition: leaving the stage and staying in command, controlling the career, contracts and strategy of an international group.