![]() ![]() But for some reason, the saw it as a demo or something, so they didn’t pay attention to what they were doing and everything sounded like shit. Then, we decided to record at Sunlight Studios in Stockholm just to save some money. ![]() “We did our first EP with Peter Tägtgren at Abyss Studios. “We definitely felt rushed doing that album,” Hegg says. While slightly unfocused, Once Sent From the Golden Hall is the promising, insistent sound of a band determined to break new ground (albeit not quite seasoned enough to do so without wearing its influences on its bloodied armor). He hasn’t quite found his signature roar, and the songs are strong, but somewhat schizophrenic, vacillating between galloping rhythms seasoned with euphoric guitar harmonies, and more expansive numbers that combine chugging doom with tremolo-picked black metal-sometimes in the same song. He depicts some of the challenges the Norsemen have navigated on their course from being a ragged, melodic death metal band to a group that draws from traditional metal, thrash, death, and whatever else best complements their tales of struggle, triumph, and brutality.Įqually inspired by Iron Maiden and Entombed, the first full-length Amon Amarth album, released in 1998, is more urgent and unpolished than many of its later releases. And then it just made sense to keep doing it because there was so much stuff you could do with the topic.”ĭescribing the chronological journey that shaped Amon Amarth over the decades, Hegg guides us album to album, illustrating the band’s musical and lyrical evolution. ![]() “Back then we weren’t sure we were going to go full Viking continuously through the whole career,” Hegg says. However, he and his bandmates had no idea that 21 years later they would still be calling to Odin, Thor, and Loki, and their stage show would abound with Viking imagery, including, at some performances, a giant sailing ship. Sometimes they’re based on history, sometimes they come from mythology and sometimes I use them to tell personal stories about myself masked in Viking themes.”īack in 1996, Hegg enjoyed weaving Norse themes throughout the band’s first EP Sorrow Throughout the Nine Worlds and continued to wander the Viking path on the band’s debut full-length 1998’s Once Sent From the Golden Hall. “I’ve always thought of my lyrics as little parts of a movie. “The very first song we wrote was ‘Thor Arise,’ which is about Vikings praising Thor and calling to him in battle,” Hegg says, as Amon Amarth prepares to tour to support their 11th full-length album, Berserker. And Hegg, whose main vocal influences were Edge of Sanity’s Dan Swanö, Entombed’s LG Petrov and Deicide’s Glen Benton, guided Amon Amarth with forceful growls and vivid Viking imagery. ![]() After releasing a single demo, the two musicians joined forces with Hegg and others to create a group that was less interested in following old formulas and more intent on forging new paths, both musically and thematically. The band’s roots date back to the late ‘80s when guitarist Olavi Mikkonen and drummer Niko Kaukinen played in the Stockholm-style grindcore band Scum. He knew the folklore of the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda and he researched the Vikings expeditions to the coastline of North America 500 years before Columbus, and the ninth century explorations which enabled the warriors to control large parts of modern Ukraine and Russia.Įxpansion and reconstruction were as vital for the longevity of Amon Amarth as they were for their ancestors. However, from the start, vocalist Johan Hegg was fascinated by his Viking ancestry. In the mid-to-late ‘90s, others, including Unleashed, Enslaved, Ensiferum, and Eluveitie joined the brigade, injecting elements of black metal, strains of Nordic folk and lyrics about gaining wisdom and power from the gods, sailing angry oceans, navigating dangerous forests, fighting to the death, and living forever beyond the gates of Valhalla.īy contrast, Amon Amarth started as an unpolished band comparable to Swedish melo-death metal outfits like At the Gates and Dark Tranquility. The new Bathory juxtaposed sword-clashing aggression with acoustic atmospheres that became trademarks of the Viking metal genre. Pre-order buy pre-order buy you own this wishlist in wishlist go to album go to track go to album go to trackīy purist standards, Amon Amarth don’t play true Viking metal, a term coined after first-wave black metal pioneer Bathory stopped praising Satan, embraced their pagan roots, and released albums about plundering and pillaging (like 1990’s Hammerheart and 1991’s Twilight of the Gods). ![]()
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