The Gods Answer Amon Amarth
by Theo Kapodistrias
May 26, 2010
Swedish death-metal band Amon Amarth has a love of Viking history and Norse mythology. Often dubbed as Viking Metal, Amon Amarth’s music consistently revisits a time when people dreamed of dining in Vahalla with Odin One-Eye himself.
“The mythology and the history and all the old sagas are quite violent and dramatic. It goes pretty [well] with violent and brutal music,” Amon Amarth vocalist Johan Hagg tells AUX.
“I think a lot of people can relate to the stories as well because it isn’t just stories about Vikings. If you go deeper into it in a metaphorical sense you can relate to a lot of the stuff in both mythology and history; the mythology itself is comparable to a lot of mythology from different parts of the world anyway—so it’s not so specifically Norse as would think.”
Amon Amarth’s videos are usually epic in scope. During the video shoot for Twilight of the Thunder God, the Norse gods seemed to answer Amon Amarth prayers and provided an impressive storm to capture on film. “We went to Poland, they have a Viking village there close to the Baltic Sea and there were hurricane winds coming in.”
“That was more or less pure luck because we didn’t need to fake a storm. It just came by itself,” guitarist Ted Lundstrom added.
“During the day it was windy but it picked up during the night. So when we were supposed to film our stuff we were standing there and there was sand everywhere. It was like standing in a sandstorm getting your face blistered.”
Watch a full interview with Amon Amarth on a new episode of HARD, tonight at 10pm, only on AUX.