Biography from Last.fm
Amon Amarth is a Swedish melodic death metal band from Tumba, formed in 1992. The band takes its name from the Sindarin name of Mount Doom, a volcano in J. R. R. Tolkien′s Middle-earth. The band is composed of lead guitarist Olavi Mikkonen, vocalist Johan Hegg, bassist Ted Lundström, rhythm guitarist Johan Söderberg, and drummer Jocke Wallgren. Amon Amarth has released ten studio albums, one compilation album, one EP, one video album, and ten music videos. Read more on Last.fm
VIKING METAL WITH BIG BEARDS. That’s why you’re here, right? To see lots of photos of Johan Hegg and the lads from Amon Amarth headbang to their top-notch brand of sub-genre metal. Yes? Our man Mike Burnell was on hand to get lots of photos of just that when the band’s recent UK tour landed in Brighton.
Didn’t you hear? We all just survived Ragnarok. The latest instalment in the long line of ancient-cultures-predicting-the-end-of-the-world trend passed everyone by on Saturday night, and at no point did Fenrir eat the world, or Odin get into an almighty ruck with the Midgard Serpent. Ho hum.
And what better way to celebrate this ridiculous non-event than by listening to a load of Viking Metal? EXACTLY.
Part and parcel of being opinionated music lovers is that we go and experience lots of music in its natural habitat – on a stage – and then we decide how good it was. Some spectacles are so powerful that they evoke emotions strong enough to form memories through the drunkenness. It’s a rarity but that’s why some here have to name several before deciding upon their Favourite Gig of 2013. There is zero reason for you to be reading this but if you’ve read this far, you’ll get at least halfway down before clicking the cross.
As much as it’s The Right Thing to say that music isn’t a competition, it’s also fair and correct to point out that music is not your children. You’re allowed to have a favourite and you usually do. That’s why we like to focus on our favourites. here are some brief explanations as to why our contributors’ favourite albums are their favourite albums.
Of course, all of these favourite albums were compiled and democratised into an overall Thrash Hits Album of 2013. If you’d like to read TH Editors, Raziq Rauf and Hugh Platt‘s Top 3 albums of 2013, you should click here. They’re special and one of them is writing about himself in third person right now.
If you’re on this page, you really should have seen the Thrash Hits Albums of the Year 2013 list already. If you haven’t, you should click that link or this link and sort that out. This piece will attempt to delve into some vague statistical analysis of the results. This is really only interesting if you care deeply about either the Thrash Hits Top 20, any old statistical analysis or both, so the chances are you’ll have clicked through to something else by now. Anyway…
Metal Hammer’s annual Defenders of the Faith tour is usually a bloody good excuse to catch a whole crop of excellent bands all in one place – this year’s line-up was particularly impressive, with headliners Amon Amarth being backed up by the likes of Carcass, Hell, and Bleed From Within. We got our principal photographer, Mr Gary Wolstenholme, to head on down to Manchester to catch one of the last big metal tours of 2013 do its dirty business all over the O2 Academy.
Amon Amarth
Deceiver of the Gods
Metal Blade
25 June 2013
Viking Metal – a scourge of Christendom or just a global ballache to genre purists everywhere? Amon Amarth are foisted with this most divisive tag; for anybody who’s spent five seconds with the music of these Swedish bruisers, it’s apparent that they’re about as likely to fit into a Hammerheart-era Bathory-shaped mould as Falling In Reverse are.
Well, he survived – and here’s the final proof. In the last of his three reports from Hammerfest IV, David Keevill pretends he didn’t have a permanent hangover, and reviews Oaf, Cerebral Bore, Mortad, DripBack, Hell, Amon Amarth, and – of course – Saturday night’s headliners, the almighty Skindred.
It’s time for the first Thrash Hits festival splash page of 2012! This dubious honour once again falls to Hammerfest. All of our Hammerfest 2012 coverage from the weekend will be linked to on this here post, so make sure you bookmark it as it’s all you’re going to need. That means individual band coverage in the form of photos and setlists, as well as reviews of each day’s highlights. Every scandalous rumour and dirty bit of gossip that our man David Keevill overheard, and every outrgeous photo of Pontins-based debauchery that Gary Wolstenholme snapped, will be here.
If you’re going to call your festival “Hammerfest IV – The Hammer of Thor”, it’d be downright rude not to invite the world’s best-known (and hairiest) Viking Metal band. We are of course referring to the titanic Amon Amarth (and their equally titanic beards).