- Country: Sweden
- Style: Melodic death metal
- Label: Metal Blade Records
- Release date: 2 October 2026
Thirteen albums in, Amon Amarth have nothing left to prove about who they are. What they did need to prove, after the tired-sounding The Great Heathen Army in 2022, was that the fire behind the formula had not gone out.
Some history helps here. The Swedes spent their early years sharpening melodic death metal into something you could march to, and by With Oden on Our Side and Twilight of the Thunder God they had found the sound that made them festival headliners. Records like Jomsviking kept that standard high, but the band’s recent run has felt more like routine than conquest. This time the band worked with Danish producer Jacob Hansen at his studio, recording in two sessions between spring 2025 and March 2026 and, by guitarist Olavi Mikkonen’s own account, finishing one song at a time before moving to the next.
That patience shows. “Gjallarhorn” opens with the kind of mid-paced battle march that would have fitted on Twilight of the Thunder God, Johan Hegg roaring with the authority of a man who has done this for decades. “We Rule the Waves” carries a chorus made for open-air crowds, even if it sails close to camp, and “Raven God” is the record’s tankard-raiser. Mikkonen and Johan Söderberg still write twin-guitar lines that refuse to leave your head.
Then comes the left turn. “Upphaf” is the first fully acoustic song in the band’s catalogue, a folk-shaded piece with Hegg pulling his voice down to something close to a recital. On paper it is a gamble. Sat at track five, it clears the air, and when “Die with a War Cry” kicks the door back in, the riffs hit twice as hard.
Not everything lands. The closing “Ascending Like an Eagle” reaches for an epic send-off and drifts past without leaving much of a mark, and nothing here will knock the mid-2000s classics off their pedestal. Still, this is the most alert Amon Amarth have sounded in years. For a band that has built a career on singing about the end of the world, it is fitting that the best surprise on the album is a song whose title means “beginning”.
Best tracks:
Gjallarhorn
We Rule the Waves
Upphaf
Raven God
Author’s rating: 7.5/10
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