Amon Amarth-Surtur Rising
Metal Blade
March 29, 2011

I always said that it takes two things that leads to a band's success: talent and luck, with the extra emphasis being on the luck. Bands can have all the skill in the world, but if their music doesn't get heard by the right ears, they will live out their days in obscurity. Once bands reach a level of success, its up to the talent to keep them producing at such a high level. Amon Amarth has an extreme amount of talent to continue releasing such strong albums, with Surtur Rising, their eigth studio full length album, sounding as good as anything they've done previously.

Amon Amarth is a very powerful band, playing a brand of metal that sounds as if vikings are creatively pounding down a village and/or city, leaving a path of audible destruction in their wake. While they do play at faster tempos sometimes, they mostly keep things at a marching speed, which is my favorite thing about this album. Everything is so fist pumping on this album, pumping me up with an angry energy. The music has room to breathe at this speed, and the vocals end up sounding that much better in the process.

This is an album on par with their back catalogue. Amon Amarth have discovered a formula that works for them, one full of crunchy metal guitars, angry vocals and a driving rhythm section. This is the median between death metal and power metal.

Written by: RF
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