Surely the most controversial installment of this Century Media greatest-hits series,
Arch Enemy's
Manifesto not only skimped on the total number of songs offered -- just ten, making it feel like a bloated EP -- but it flat-out ignored the group's first three albums featuring original vocalist
Johan Liiva. Instead, two tracks were cherry-picked from each of the subsequent four studio efforts and one live album fronted by his replacement,
Angela Gossow, including, to be fair, unnaturally infectious 2000s melodic death/thrash benchmarks like "We Will Rise," "My Apocalypse," and "Dead Eyes See No Future." However, although this tack may have qualified
Manifesto of Arch Enemy as a serviceable sampler of the band's more commercially successful second era for new fans to explore, it hardly satisfied the expectations of longtime fans, for whom a far more acceptable compromise would probably have entailed a double-disc set so that both of
Arch Enemy's vocalists could have been represented. Maybe they'll get it right next time. (Adding insult to injury, Century Media then proceeded to release another
Arch Enemy collection that same year, entitled
The Root of All Evil, this time featuring re-recorded highlights from the
Liiva years, performed by the current bandmembers, including
Gossow, but that's another review.)