Captivity & Devourment

Captivity & Devourment, released on 26 January 2015 by Listenable, broke a silence of more than a decade. By then Christopher Amott was based not in Sweden but in New York City. The line-up is entirely new: Matt Hallquist on vocals, Joey Concepcion on the other guitar, Sara Claudius on bass and Márton Veress on drums. Ten songs. Claudius's role is the unusual one. She is a guitarist by origin who offered to play bass, and by Amott's account she writes the majority of Armageddon's lyrics and contributes to the music too. The cover came from handing the lyrics to the Italian oil painter Paolo Girardi and asking him to paint what he saw in them; the band were explicit that they did not want the uninspired digital artwork that is everywhere now. Amott called this some of his best guitar playing to date and declared that Armageddon was a full-time thing for him now. He has also played a guest solo on Babymetal's "Ijime, Dame, Zettai - Nemesis ver."