Amon Amarth - Twilight of the Thunder God

Amon Amarth - Twilight of the Thunder God
Anyone who's read this blog for any amount of time has probably figured out that I have a real soft spot for Viking Metal. I love this stuff. Right up front, I'm going to tell you that this band is one of the most kick ass metal bands in this genre I've heard so far. I really like Heidevolk, but this band is better.

Amon Amarth is a Swedish band that started out as a basic death metal banned. Calling themselves Scum (not exactly original), they were basically a nobody band. They changed their name to Amon Amarth and began focusing on Norse mythology, which the lead singer Johan Hegg was extremely big on.

Him being such a giant, the other guys in the band probably had to follow along. The dude is HUGE.

Anyway, their music is guttural, strong, and filled with mythos. The lyrics are great stuff (mostly in English). This album caps off more than half a dozen so far under this band name and is probably one of the better ones, I think. Some of the early stuff was a little hokey and the band hadn't found their smooth collaboration yet, I think.

Once Sent From the Golden Hall and Sorry Throughout the Nine Worlds are a little disjointed compared to the latter three including this new one. They aren't crap, it's still great music, but you can really hear a difference in sound quality and group mesh between them.

This album grinds hard and has extremely impressive lyrics and I highly recommend it to any metal fan.