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.
There’s less than a week to go until the Midlands once again plays host to the UK’s biggest outdoor unabashed metal festival. Make no mistake – Bloodstock Open Air carries no caveats about being a “rock” festival. It is about being the heaviest fully-camping festival the UK has to offer, and their 2014 line-up – stuffed to the guts with death, black, and extreme metal – sets the festival apart from the larger Download and Sonisphere Festivals. That’s not a bad thing – a little variety goes a long way in the saturated UK festival market – so naturally this week’s Sunday Spotify Slaylist is all about the Bloodstock 2014 line-up.
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.
You know the drill by now. This is the Thrash Hits Festival Splash Page and this is where you’ll find some of the most comprehensive coverage of Download Festival 2013 that you don’t have to pay for. It’s here!
There may have a been a few technical problems that cut shor the length of Amon Amarth’s set at Download Festival 2013, but they had a FRICKING VIKING LONGBOAT ON STAGE WITH THEM. We’ll forgive pretty much anything because of that.