Amon AmarthThe Allfather Awakens

Album number thirteen, and Amon Amarth are setting sail on the same sea in the same ship again. Nobody's surprised. The line-up hasn't moved: Hegg, Mikkonen, Söderberg, Lundström, Wallgren. It was recorded in Denmark, at Jacob Hansen's studio, in two sessions, and it ran from spring 2025 to March 2026. According to Mikkonen, the songs were cut one at a time: finish one, move to the next. The band says it's not a concept album (if they say so, fine), but Odin pops up somewhere in every song. The cover is a huge Oden portrait painted by Tom Thiel, and the cover does its job properly. Oh, and the eighth track is called "The Allfather Awakes", while the album is "Awakens". It's not a typo, that's just how it is (!)

The verdict comes from what can be checked, and there the picture is clear. Blabbermouth gave it 7.5 out of 10. They liked the choruses, "Kvasir's Blood", "Upphaf" (the band's first ever acoustic song) and the closer "Ascending Like an Eagle", but wrote that the band is reworking its familiar formula and that the peak is still 2008's Twilight of the Thunder God. Metal Hammer, on the other hand, rates it the best thing they've done since then. mxdwn didn't give a score. They loved the riffs and "Upphaf", and also noted there's nothing new here. The user average on Metal Kingdom is 78, but from just 3 votes, so don't take it seriously. It's a tiny little debate, this one: nobody's asking "is it bad?", everybody's asking "how familiar is it?"

The band says it's not a concept album (if they say so, fine), but Odin pops up somewhere in every song.

My score is 74. What lifts it past seventy is stuff you can see without checking anyone else's opinion: the choruses every review praises, "Upphaf" for having the guts to write an acoustic song after thirteen albums, and a five-man line-up that has held together for years and kept the same sound going. Why it doesn't reach eighty is just as obvious: the people who love the formula and the people who don't are saying the same thing, and the surprise is crammed into a single song. Then there's the money. In the Season of Mist shop everything shows as sold out: digipak CD, 180-gram black vinyl, the green and blue marbled ones, a liquid-filled vinyl (whatever that means?) and cassette. The page shows one single price, 28.99 euros, but which format it belongs to is anyone's guess. If you're after the vinyl, you're too late. The digital copy, though, never sells out, so enjoy it. If you've worn out your copy of Twilight, buy it. If you're starting the band from scratch, swing by 2008 first, then come back...