Review by Paul Castles
Amon Amarth have been sailing upon the high seas of uplifting melodic metal for more than two decades now. Deceiver of the Gods is the latest album from the swashbuckling Swedes and their latest opus of Viking inspired tales of bygone battles from spiritual days of yore stands shoulder to muscled shoulder with any of their previous eight albums. Amon Amarth were very much adopted as one of their own by UK metal fans who bought into their broadsword waving ideology from the moment their Dragonboat was first swept up onto a cold Blighty beach. While it seems that Scandinavia’s mammoth metal conveyor belt has been running on max since King Gustav was on the throne, Amon Amarth have managed to carve their own niche into the tree… no doubt using an original Viking sunstone to do so.
Deceiver of the Gods has everything you could possibly want from a metal album, harsh abrasive vocals, mesmerising melodies and sublimely flavoured with mythical imagery. The title track is a blinding start, a brief soulful symphonic sequence, before a piercing riff crashes through the chilly icy waters and Johan Hegg opens up his lagoon-sized lungs with a mighty rasping roar. ‘As Loke Falls’ opens with a spiraling hypnotic whirlwind of axe energy before Hegg’s gravelly delivery takes over sounding fiercer than ever before. The album theme focuses on the Norse God Loki, and his battles against Thor, with, as ever, Amon Amarth drawing their inspiration from the epic tales of Norse mythology. Some have questioned whether it’s time for the bearded beasts to seek inspiration from other fields but while the heroic battles of the mythical North continue to inspire work of such quality I can’t see that it’s a problem.
‘Under Siege’ is a fiery dragon of a song, completely absorbing from start to finish and lyrically this titanic tome is a gem with poignantly crafted prose such as ‘Reinforcements will not show, the day is much too late’ and ‘There’s nothing left to lose, we have run out of time’. ‘Blood Eagle’ is angrier, faster, while on ‘We Shall Destroy’ Hegg sounds like he’s chewing on broken glass with a bellowing guttural growl. ‘Hel’ is another notable number, not least because Hegg shares the vocals with the legendary former Candlemass frontman Messiah Marcolin. Closing track ‘Warriors of the North’ is the album’s longest, raising a froth-topped Viking horn full of ale to the sky in salute of yet more heroic Nordic brothers. Deceiver of the Gods is not so much a gift from the Gods, but from Amon Amarth.
8 out of 10
Tracklisting:
- Deceiver Of The Gods
- As Loke Falls
- Father Of The Wolf
- Shape Shifter
- Under Siege
- Blood Eagle
- We Shall Destroy
- Hel
- Coming Of The Tide
- Warriors of the North
