Amon Amarth have announced their new album The Allfather Awakens, a ten-song masterwork due 2nd October via Metal Blade Records. It arrives led by opening track and single ‘Gjallarhorn’.
Where the band’s recent acoustic excursion ‘Upphaf’ carried the solemnity of an oral history, ‘Gjallarhorn’ lands as a furious Amon Amarth classic, its driving riff and high-tempo, catchy chorus already marked out as a future live staple. As ever, Oden, the Norse “all father” of war, wisdom, death, magic and poetry, is the through-line across the band’s lyrics and artwork, though this is no concept album, rather a collection of historically inspired tales of conflict and sacrifice.
The Swedes’ thirteenth album since 1998’s Once Sent From The Golden Hall took shape across two sessions at producer Jacob Hansen’s studio in Denmark, the band writing on the road and treating every track as a single.
“We worked on one song at a time and made each song as good as possible,” says guitarist Olavi Mikkonen. “Then we recorded one song at a time until each track was totally finished. Only then did we start on the next one.”
Guitar-wise they moved away from 5150 amps and back to Marshalls for a slightly less modern tone. The cover art, a powerful portrait of Oden, comes from Tom Thiel, who has now created seven of the quintet’s sleeves.
Three decades in, Amon Amarth remain a band of brothers, a unity that conquers stage and record alike. On this evidence we reckon The Allfather Awakens is another confident step up.
The accompanying tour brings an entirely new production inspired by Oden’s Golden Hall, and it begins on UK soil with support from Orbit Culture and Soilwork.
UK dates:
9th Oct, Manchester, O2 Apollo
10th Oct, London, Eventim Apollo
11th Oct, Wolverhampton, Civic Hall
The Allfather Awakens tracklist: ‘Gjallarhorn’, ‘Eight Legs Of Thunder’, ‘Kvasir’s Blood’, ‘We Rule The Waves’, ‘Upphaf’, ‘Die With A War Cry’, ‘Raven God’, ‘The Allfather Awakes’, ‘Oden’s Hunt’, ‘Ascending Like An Eagle’.
For more on Amon Amarth, head to RAMzine.
