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Amon Amarth: Twilight Of The Thunder God
Melodic Death/Viking Metal
Rating: 3.0/5.0

www.amonamarath.com
Metalblade Records
www.myspace.com/amonamarath


If you’re a fan of the last several Amon Amarth CD’s there is good news for you. You’re going to love their latest release ‘Twilight Of The Thunder God.’ The band’s sound has remained consistent through their last four or five trips through the studio, at least in sound and style. The songs have taken on slightly different structure as the band seems to be more comfortable these days with shorter anthem-type tunes rather than the longer, epic songs that they seemed to prefer in their earlier days.

If you’re not familiar with Amon Amarth you can get a pretty good idea of what they sound like by taking any other melodic death metal band from Sweden – maybe In Flames or Dark Tranquility – and making a few modifications. Musically they might be the most melodic and a little less flashy, drawing more influence from classic metal and NWBHM than most of their fellow countrymen. The other main difference is the vocals of Johan Hegg, who uses a pure death metal growl rather than the thrashy, screaming type of vocals that many of the Swedish death bands use. Together it is an interesting contradiction. Hegg has the one of the deepest and evilest roars in all of death metal and one that you wouldn’t expect to hear with this type of music.

All in all ‘Twilight Of The Thunder God’ is a solid release. Guitarists Olavi Mikkonen and Johan Söderberg have always been good riff writers and most of the songs on this album are extremely catchy. Standouts like ‘Guardians Of Asgaard’ and ‘The Hero’ are especially captivating and play over in your mind long after you’ve heard them. Unfortunately it’s easy to get bored listening to the same old formula throughout the entire disc. I hope we hear a bit more diversity from the band next time around. Amon Amarth could be capable of great things if they’d leave their comfort zone and experiment with some new ideas and different tempos.
- Tim Carroll

In Short

All in all ‘Twilight Of The Thunder God’ is a solid release. Unfortunately it’s easy to get bored listening to the same old formula throughout the entire disc. I hope we hear a bit more diversity from the band next time around.

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