Amon Amarth - "Jomsviking"

Amon Amarth - Jomsviking
2016, Metal Blade

1. First Kill
2. Wanderer
3. On a Sea of Blood
4. One Against All
5. Raise Your Horns
6. The Way of Vikings
7. At Dawn's First Light
8. One Thousand Burning Arrows
9. Vengeance Is My Name
10. A Dream That Cannot Be
11. Back On Northern Shores

I wasn't originally going to get Jomsviking as I'm not a huge Amon Amarth fan. I liked Deceiver of the Gods alright and that was kind of enough for me. However, as often happens, I was on vacation and I was seduced by the power of the special edition media book packaging and cool cover art. I like this album, it's got pretty much everything I liked about the last one...only again. Basically, if you're not a fan of Amon Amarth, then you can safely skip Jomsviking. If you are a fan you probably already own this so my words mean nothing to you. This album is the band's first concept album. It's about a young viking warrior searching for his lost love. Spoiler alert: it doesn't end well.

Useless Fact: Doro Pesch provides some guest vocals on "A Dream That Cannot Be" as the lost love. As you can tell by the title, their love is not exactly The Notebook.

Amon Amarth - "Deceiver of the Gods"

Amon Amarth - Deceiver of the Gods
2013, Metal Blade

1. Deceiver of the Gods
2. As Loke Falls
3. Father of the Wolf
4. Shape Shifter
5. Under Siege
6. Blood Eagle
7. We Shall Destroy
8. Hel
9. Coming of the Tide
10. Warriors of the North

Hey kids! Did you like the movie Thor? Would you like to hear an album about it? Actually, that's not really fair. Amon Amarth have been doing death metal about Norse gods for years before the movie. I heard one of their better known songs, "Cry of the Black Bird," a long time ago but it never did anything for me. So motivated me to buy this? Um... I blame the cover. It's cool. Also, it was cheap and I didn't have money to buy any of the new Daniel Amos stuff. As luck would have it, I quite enjoy Deceiver of the Gods. It's got growly vocals aplenty but it also has a lot of melody and NWOBHM sensibility. It makes the songs a lot more interesting as they're not all about blast beats and downtuned noise. In fact, quite a few of these songs are catchy indeed. As I understand it this album marks an evolution of the band's sound. I'm not sure how long time fans would react, but I love this stuff.

Useless Fact: Amon Amarth comes from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. It's the Sindarin (his made up elf language) word for Mount Doom.