### Amon Amarth: Versus the world

#### 17/01/05 || Lord K Philipson

2 years ago I played a soccergame in the “Beer-Cup”, held in Stockholm. Me and Amon Amarth-vocalist Johan were defensemen, dressed up in corpsepaint. Some of the other guys from Amon Amarth as well as Dominion of Dark Funeral were on our team as well and poor fucken drummer Fredrik broke some bones. Needless to say, we lost our 2 games. Just wanted to share that. It looks like Fredrik has recovered well though coz here´s the new Amon album, getting reviewed by the mighty Lord, the only review that actually means something.

I like melodic death metal. I have told you that before and I´ll tell you again. Amon Amarth are fucken awesome at providing me with some. I have liked all of the albums they recorded, but without a doubt, this is their best effort, just as it should be with a latest release. I saw them at Wacken this year as well and it was probably the best show of the festival, then again, I only witnessed like 3 shows. I´m very hard to impress, so it was excellent to say the least. The guys are fucken awesome and vocalist Johan and I are kinda related seeing we are both bearers of impressive beards. Only mine is like 3 times longer. I rule.

Melodic death metal was the subject. Amon Amarth have no blastbeats, they don´t like blastbeats I bet. Either that or Fredrik´s arm isn´t fully recovered to perform those. Then again, Amon never had any blastbeats as far as I can remember, so I guess they just concentrate on the little things they do oh-so well, like creating memorable songs, sweet emotions, nice melodies and alot of midpaced doublebass-drumming within their songs.

For that I give them a standing ovation.

Amon isn´t about aggression first-hand, but the aggression is there anyways. These fuckers are a nice break from all the Nile´s/Internecine´s/Cannibal Corpse´s 2nd hand copies in the metal-scene. I just can´t see anyone with some decent taste not liking this and I hope for good things as far as these guys go. There are too few bands playing this kind of music and I wouldn´t mind Amon to lead the way for a boom in the scene with this style. Then again, I´m not sure I want much more bands doing this as I´m all fine with Amon Amarth. They have their own thing going and definitely knows how to achieve it. I´m very fucken impressed and it´s a fucken killeralbum that I´m telling you to check out. I´ve always had a soft spot for recordings coming out of Berno Studios in Sweden, and it was a good decision to use it as the sound is excellent. It captures all of the shit Amon Amarth is about and adds brutality even to the more mellow parts. Whatever that means, fuck you, I´m running out of cool sentences to use.

Good muthafucken work, kids!

7/10

- Information
- Released: 2002
- Label: Metal Blade Records
- Website: www.amonamarth.com
- Band
- Johan Hegg: vocals
- Olavi Mikkonen: guitars
- Johan Söderberg: guitars
- Ted Lundström: bass
- Fredrik Andersson: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Death In Fire
- 02. For The Stabwounds In Our Backs
- 03. Where Silent Gods Stand Guard
- 04. Versus The World
- 05. Across The Rainbow Bridge
- 06. Down The Slopes Of Death
- 07. Thousand Years Of Oppression
- 08. Bloodshed
- 09. ... and soon the world will cease to be