Burning Bridges (Arch Enemy Album) - Reception

Reception

Burning Bridges is dark like a death metal album should be, but the use of melody in the guitar work push it limitlessly far above the level of a standard death metal release like Gallery of Suicide or Serpents of the Light.

Burning Bridges was well received by critics. Steve Huey of Allmusic praised the album writing that the band, "having honed a potent blend of classic-style death metal, melodic twin-guitar leads à la the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, touches of prog metal and of grindcore courtesy of later Carcass or Napalm Death, and just plain solid riff writing. Burning Bridges, their third effort, consolidates the gains made on its predecessor Stigmata, establishing Arch Enemy as a dependable force and one of the better bands working death metal territory as the '90s drew to a close." Nathan Robinson of Metal Rules was surprised at the amount of fast material, although there are no blast beats, and praised the singer Johan Liiva stating that he "offers more variety this time, moving between his classic guttural belches to higher, blackened screeches. He truly delivers an impressive vocal performance!" He later highlights the songs "Silverwing", "The Immortal" and "Seed of Hate". Archaic Magazine's Ron Salden also praised Liiva's vocals and the production. Salden states that "they took the best of their first 2 albums and Burning Bridges is the amazing result!"

Sean Palmerston of Exclaim! writes that "the eight tracks contained within stand-up quite nicely with recent releases from The Haunted and Witchery as some of the best Swedish metal in recent times." Paul Schwarz of Chronicles of Chaos praised the songs highlighting "Pilgrim". He wrote: "What I love most, though, is the way Arch Enemy slip between the two different feels. "Pilgrim" begins with a hugely melodic, very heavy metal, lead/harmony part, but when Johan Liiva's crushing vocals enter, so does a heavy, percussive, death metal sounding verse riff, then, when the chorus comes in, the two opposites are expertly combined together." Critics Ron Salden and Paul Schwarz stated that "this album will surely be one of the best releases in this year if not the best!" and that Arch Enemy "managed to pool their considerable talents and emerge with one of the year's best albums", respectively.