Album Review: Amon Amarth – DECEIVER OF THE GODS

With the June 25th US release of their ninth studio record, “Deceiver of the Gods”, Swedish death metal band, Amon Amarth, have come thundering back from Odin’s lair, with what many are calling the bands best record to date.

I’m not ashamed, but rather sad to admit, that I first became aware of Amon Amarth after hearing them on Metal Blades 30th Anniversary Sampler, one of the greatest freebies ever, from Record Store Day 2012. The track that hooked me was “Cry of the Blackbirds” from the bands 2006 release “With Oden on our Side”. I couldn’t stop listening to it. It made me drive too fast. I listened to it at such ungodly volume that the deafening aftershock is still likely circling the stratosphere somewhere over Scandinavia. It made me do a lot of things, including digging through the band’s catalog. Which only increased my insatiable need for the bands beautiful ferocity. Now, over 20 years since they were spewed forth from a fictional volcano, Amon Amarth continue to make records music fit for slaying your unfortunate enemies by. The track “Blood Eagle” is a perfect example of the bands driving music, and lyrical brutality:

 “Penetrate your naked skin; Rip the flesh and dig within; With a pleased and twisted grin; I spread your lungs like eagle’s wings”.

As always, these words come straight from Amon Amarth’s songwriting playbook, but without falling victim to the sad sound of recycling. Something the band has expertly navigated since the early 90’s.”Warriors of the North”, the last track on the concept record, is a thinly veiled auto-biographical threat that the band plans on continuing it’s metal rein over middle-earth, as well as points beyond. And like all great vocalists, Johnan Hegg’s voice has become even more snarly with age, and at times gives the pumped up Priest-y guitar work of Johan Söderberg and Olavi Mikkonen, a run for their money, on the way to Valhalla’s gilded gates. But with all this talk about Vikings, at the end of the day, Amon Amarth is true-to-form melodic-death-metal band. Standing defiantly, and deservedly, at the top of Death Metal Mountain.

 If Amon Amarth hasn’t bludgeoned it’s way into your black metal heart already, Deceiver of the Gods is the record that will change that. For established fans of the band, Gods’ ten tracks will once again rip and tear you into submission, then lay your pagan soul to waste on the shore.

The bands massive tour kicks off on June 29th at the Rockstar Mayhem Festival in San Bernardino, then hits the UK and Europe in November.