Having been on a commercial climb since 2006's "With Oden on Our Side," and three years after their critically acclaimed release, "Deceiver of the Gods," Swedish melodic death metal giants Amon Amarth have returned with their newest effort, "Jomsviking" — a very heavy and ambitious concept album that dropped March 25.
Amon Amarth is widely famous for their storytelling regarding Norse mythology and Viking culture through their music, but develop a new sense of it with this album as their writing becomes more cinematic and vivid.
The story is quite simple — a young Viking is in love with a girl who is married off. In his rage, he accidentally kills a man, leading his father to disown him and his village to exile him. He swears to return and have his revenge and ends up joining the Jomsviking — a legendary band of mercenaries. He hones his fighting skills and returns to take the girl's hand in marriage, with a tragic ending.
An essential tracks on this album, and probably the only memorable ones, are the first, one track in the middle, "The Way of Vikings," and the two at the end — while the majority just fills in details and makes for good storytelling. The opening track, "First Kill," is probably my favorite on the album, aside from the dramatic seven-minute closing track. There's even a fun drinking song on this album, "Raise Your Horns," which clearly may have just been a song pre-written to be printed on T-shirts.
This album is also the first Amon Amarth record to not feature drummer Frederik Andersson, who had been with them for 17 years and left the band last year. Although with bands of this style, it's honestly not something you may notice as guitar work and vocals seem to steal the spotlight.
Unlike previous Amon Amarth albums, this one doesn't seem to slow down at any point until the very end, which proves both a strength and a weakness. The upside is that it's a straight 52 minutes of brutality; the downside is it can feel a bit repetitive. While most of their albums have one or two slower tracks that seem to spice up the album a bit; this theme is dropped for "Jomsviking."
If you've been a fan of Amon Amarth for a few years, like I have, and you've listened to some of their previous albums, you may end up feeling a bit disappointed by this one. The songs clearly are more refined — the guitar work is filled with blazing riffs and melodic leads, and Johan Hegg's growls are truly a Viking's roar, but it lacks a certain diversity in sound and feeling you may have found on "Twilight of the Thunder God," or my personal favorite — "Surtur Rising."
Overall, while the fact that it's a concept album gives it a certain flair, it doesn't really hold up to their previous few albums unless you're not already well acquainted with the fact that most European death, folk and power metal bands tend to sound very similar after a while and need to add the extra effort to keep the music sounding fresh. If you asked me to give it a rating on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a 6.
