Concept albums can be a nefarious, tricky business. Often, a band’s collective head will remain planted inside their shrivelling creative sphincter throughout, oblivious to the rhyme and reason of reality. So, with Amon Amarth’s first full-blown shot at the medium, ‘Jomsviking’, on the way, it’s refreshing to hear rhythm guitarist Olavi Mikkonen’s straight up take on the video for At Dawn’s First Light, where disembowelling, beheadings and band members playing with fucking arrows stuck in them feature heavily.
“It’s really violent,” he says. “We were in a Viking village in northern Germany and we pretty much got ran over by 30 Vikings. I haven’t seen the final thing, but we all got quite hurt. I hope it’s gonna look really messy and brutal.”
Messy and brutal. That’s all he wants. The video, alongside another ludicrous effort for the album’s lead single First Kill – think Body Count’s Talk Shit, Get Shot but with more beards – helps to create an almost unfair misconception about the new album, though. Blood. Gore. Death metal. That’s all there is to it, right? Wrong.
Amon Amarth’s 10th full-length is a tale of love, tragedy and, naturally, Vikings. A romantic proposition goes awry, the protagonist accidentally slices some poor bloke’s throat open and subsequently flees home, joining the Jomsvikings, a rather nasty bunch of warriors who would swear anyone in, full devotion being the only prerequisite. The epic ends in a mercilessly bloody fashion – listen to it yourself, don’t spoil it – and was penned by the band’s vocalist, Johan Hegg. This is ambition. This is innovation. This is bloody hard work, according to Mikkonen.
“I was sold from the beginning,” he explains. “Obviously Johan put quite a lot of thought into it before he showed us – he basically had the whole story and it’s more or less a full movie script – and my biggest concern was that we wouldn’t have enough material to fill out the whole album.
“When he showed us the story, that’s when we started to write together for the album. [We had a few ideas already] and those were easy to fit into the story, because you could feel where they belonged. But the tricky part was to find completely new stuff that needed to fit the music.
"We had other ideas but they didn’t fit, as they had to fall into the story, so we had to create completely new stuff. At the same time, on this album we bounced ideas [off each other] way more than we have done in the past. I don’t think we have worked this close together, as a unit, since maybe the beginning of the band.”
That last bit could be seen as a bit of a cop out, filed in the same drawer as ‘It’s our heaviest but most melodic work yet!’ and ‘Our new record is our best yet!’. But Amon Amarth have really rocked the longboat with ‘Jomsviking’. Eighteen years since ‘Once Sent From The Golden Hall’, traces of the original beast remain, but the Amon Amarth of 2016 is a much more sophisticated, grandiose affair.
You’ve still got Hegg’s guttural, pelvis-smashing roars and it’s heavier than King Kong bench-pressing the Empire State Building, but this is less Asator and more Doom Over Dead Man. The brooding, restrained classic metal elements that have reared their heads since ‘Surtur Rising’ are now fully explored.
“There’s a lot of Iron Maiden in there,” Mikkonen says, referring to the dual harmony bliss of At Dawn’s First Light. “This is our ‘Maidenest’ song, and it doesn’t help that we are saying, ‘Run for your life!’. The older we get, we don’t care that our influences shine through in our music. Maybe five or 10 years ago, we would never have dared to do a song like Raise Your Horns or At Dawn’s First Light. These days, we don’t really care that much. If we like stuff and it’s not a total rip off, why not go for it?”
Ah, yes. Raise Your Horns. Horns and eyebrows will be raised in equal measure here. This is Amon Amarth in full party mode, channelling the oldies alongside the melodeath folky goodness of bands like Ensiferum. They’re going to have to play this at every live show until they retire. It’s the most anthemic, straightforward rocker the band have ever put their name to.
“In the story, it’s a victory,” Mikkonen says. “A celebration. The way we see celebration, that’s when you’re drinking beer, right? We saw it like a scene from Germany’s Oktoberfest, when you have all these people sitting at long tables, swinging back and forth and drinking beer. That’s the picture we had. The melody itself reminds us of drinking beer. It’s more a traditional heavy metal song. There’s a lot of Judas Priest and Accept in there with the riffing.”
The always fantastic Doro Pesch duets with Hegg on penultimate number A Dream That Cannot Be, adding another dollop of vintage metal and tying the story to a close, of sorts, involving lots of slicing. Pesch’s inclusion is just another facet to Amon Amarth’s racket.
Guests have always added a unique spin to the band’s sound, with ex-Children of Bodom axeman Roope Latvala laying down that unforgettable solo on the title track of ‘Twilight of the Thunder God’. When asked about future guests, Mikkonen suggests that plans are in motion, stating: “I don’t want to say too much, because if it’s going to happen, I want it to be a surprise.”
He remains tight-lipped when talk turns to their Download Festival main stage appearance and beyond, but it’s allegedly going to be the biggest show, production wise, they’ve ever done in the UK. “The real tour will be announced after the summer festivals and it’s going to be massive,” Mikkonen confirms. “We’re going to bring in two amazing bands – I can’t say who they are yet, but trust me, they’re amazing – and it’s not gonna be a full UK tour, but I’m pretty sure there will be five UK shows.”
The full tour may not be in sight, but this week, a stripped back Amon Amarth are set to crush a few tiny, stupendously sweaty venues to mark the release of ‘Jomsviking’. London’s 500-capacity Underworld will be brought to its knees, having sold out in just 20 minutes. “There’s no room for production,” Mikkonen says. “It’s just us and that’s it.”
Amon Amarth are a ridiculous proposition. It’s melodic death metal played through the conduit of hairy, meaty Swedish men. The band perfected their signature sound back in 2008 with ‘Twilight of the Thunder God’, gracing magazine covers and coming dangerously close to metal’s upper echelons in the process.
Somewhere along the way, they faltered. ‘Jomsviking’ more than makes up for that. This is Amon Amarth stabbing at the throat of every shit, half-baked theory bands have casually dipped their toes into over the years. This is Amon Amarth pillaging the villages of old and building something new rather than peddling the same old spiel. This is a band two decades into their career still finding new ways to tell you about Vikings.
Amon Amarth Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Tue March 22 2016 - LONDON Underworld
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