In the United States, Sweden is known for a few things - furniture, star hockey players, and melodic death metal. Tumba's Amon Amarth have made a career for themselves with the latter, and their eighth album "Surtur Rising" is no exception. For those of you unfamilar with what "melodeath" consists of - take distorted guitars and add some fast harmonic guitar riffs, heavy double bass drumming and death growls.
The band check all these boxes off with typical ferocity starting with album opener "War of the Gods" with a gutteral scream from frontman Johan Hegg and rifling drumming from Fredik Andersson as they begin to tell the tale of Surtr, who in Norse mythology was a giant who's sword engulfed the earth in fire. The album chugs along with the brutality that one would expect from the genre but they add some new elements to their music as well.
While the addition of strings has been the thing to do in metal recently, Amon Amarth uses them effectively with the songs instead of making them the focal point of the song. In addition, while the album is undeniably heavy, there seems to be more emphasis on melody in more than just the guitars. The songs have a very dynamic feel and change tempo throughout, the best examples of that being "The Last Stand of Frej" and "Doom Over Dead Man".
Overall, the best description of the band could be one that was given to them by Amazon.com member James Hall who called the band "Different, yet consistant." While this music is certainly not for everyone in the metal community, it's a fitting piece of Amon Amarth's catalog for fans of the bands previous work and fans of the Swedish sound and/or melodic death metal.
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