AMON AMARTH The Avenger CD (1999)

Before Amon Amarth became the band whose merch you see at every metal show from Stockholm to Frankston, they were a Swedish death metal outfit slowly convincing the world that Viking mythology was a legitimate and genuinely devastating lyrical framework. The Avenger, from 1999, is the moment the argument started getting hard to dismiss.

Third album in, and the Gothenburg melodic death template is fully locked, twin guitar harmonies that sound like longships on fire, Johan Hegg's vocals like a proclamation rather than a scream, and a rhythm section that hits with the kind of purpose that makes you feel the ground move. It's not theatrical in a corny way, it's theatrical in the way that actual mythology is theatrical, because the stakes are life, death, and what you leave behind. A key record in melodic death metal, and the foundation on which one of extreme music's most consistent careers was built.

Swedish melodic death metal. Full length album CD. 1999 release.

Fans of: At The Gates, Arch Enemy, Dark Tranquillity, Wintersun, Enslaved, Carcass, Vader