The Crusher

by

Amon Amarth

Edit

Amon Amarth are a kind of a band that you don't have to guess what their other album sounds like. Yes, throughout their not so long career they mostly played the same type of music, the hybrid of the so-called Gothenburg sound, or Swedish melodic death, with viking-metal, and a bit of black-metal thrown in to spice things up. If you liked one of their albums, you'll like them all. That's the case with me, as I fell in love with this furious sonic attack since I first put it in a CD-player.

Make no mistake, Amon Amarth don't reinvent the wheel, and all the elements you are to hear on "The Crusher" you've probably already heard somewhere. But it's the emotional sincerity and dedication to their music that work favorably here. The band presents us with 9 tracks, each of them having its own touch. The songs mostly fall into 2 types, either they are a ferocious high-speed death metal attack, backed with incredibly fast double bass kicks and black-metal styled rhythm-guitar, or they are a slower, kind of epic sounding songs, whose influence goes back to legendary Swedish band Bathory of the 80s (the type of epic Nordic feel that, to the best of my knowledge, first appeared on "Enter the Eternal Fire" from Bathory's album "Under the Sign..."). The singer, or to be precise, the growler Johan Hegg does excellent job conveying his rage and fury in each line he sings. The guitars sound not very typical, with only a scarce few solos thrown in, and a peculiar way to provide melodics to songs, which is more of a black metal feel than a death metal. The drumming is absolutely superb! Either on fast or slower tracks, it sounds like a powerful group of barbarian battle drums that pound hard rhythms to pump up the blood in fierce warriors' hearts.

The lyrics suit this Nordic battle feeling excellently, but its the lyrics that might be a major turn-off here. Centered around Nordic mythology and vikings' military traditions, the lyrics have a lot of lines about merciless killing and terrorising christians, and throwing Christianity out of Nordic lands. I know that many people would be highly offended by such matters. But that's Amon Amarth. These guys provide genuine Nordic battle style death metal, and they seem not to care at all whether this naturalism is appreciated by people or not. So either you're like me and love it, or you better stay away from this band's records.

The tenth song on the CD is a cover-song originally performed by cult proto-death metallers Possessed. I hardly understand the cult status of Possessed, and I feel this song is out of tune with the rest of the album. Other than that, the album's incredible energy and furious power are very addictive, and every time I put it in a player, it stays there for a long time.

Amon Amarth crash through the beerier of the current millennium with power and aggression. As a fan of more recent albums I was stoked to find this, their third release, on Amazon.com. It delivers with a slightly more aggressive sound than Versus the World and later albums. It is not a drastic difference though as they seem to tweak themselves only slightly between each record so as not to have a carbon copy of a past album, yet not lose any fans. I dig this album, and it has the guitar sound I have come to know and love by this mountain of doom.