Alissa White-Gluz isn’t one to stand idle. Joining Hammer on a video call, she immediately asks if it’s okay if she walks on a treadmill while we talk. It’s a perfect representation of who she is: driven, constantly active, always eyeing up the next horizon. In October 2025, news broke that she’d parted ways with Arch Enemy, the band she’d fronted for over a decade. That same day she released The Room Where She Died, the first single from a solo album she’d signed a deal with Napalm Records for back in 2016.
To say Alissa’s departure from Arch Enemy was a shock is an understatement. Just a week before, the band had been on a characteristically massive trek of Europe, headlining venues like the 5,000-plus capacity Eventim Apollo (formerly Hammersmith) – venues they’d comfortably graduated to playing under her 13-year tenure as frontwoman. It’s a subject Alissa is reluctant to talk about right now, admitting she “doesn’t know how to answer” when we ask about the details of her departure. Instead, she admits it was a simple case of “now or never” when it came to doing her own thing.
