But I fired that lazy bastard Jay and found a new Jay, and thus 365 Days of Metal is back. Let the aural pleasure continue.
Day 79
Amon Amarth - Surtur Rising Band Origin: Tumba, Sweden
Genre: Melodic Death Metal
Label: Metal Blade Records
Running Time: 49 minutes + Bonus Tracks
Release Date: March 29, 2011
Best Part: You got some System in my Amon Amarth? Groovy.
Favorite Tracks: Töck's Taunt: Loke's Treachery Part II, For Victory or Death, A Beast Am I, and War of the Gods
Grade: 4.5
---------
Surtur Rising in way more than 20 words or less:
Surtur Rising is Amon Amarth's eight full-length release and continues to blaze a path of blood, glory and musical evolution that fans of the band have grown highly familiar with since 1992.
The Band:
Amon Amarth, which means 'Mount Doom', a location in Tolkien's Middle-Earth (that's the setting in Lord of the Rings for you non-Tolkien-ites) is a five piece melodic death metal band from Sweden which focuses on fast paced, highly energetic, epic sounding fusions of brutality and melodic metal. The band's lyrical themes are centered on Norse mythology and the Viking Age, and provide the perfect backdrop to the music that the band has created over the past twenty years. Amon Amarth is not a Viking Metal band however, and remain adamant to that end, since Viking Metal is a subset of black metal and not at all in the same vein as what the group produces or has ever intended to create. Still, their combination of epic lyricism, musical brutality and constant melodic evolution has forged them into one of the best and highly recognizable groups of their genre. Amon Amarth has appeared alongside some of modern metals finest, and on some of its grandest stages, including Wacken Open Air, where they will appear for a sixth time in 2012.
Amon Amarth's previous releases include: Once Sent from the Golden Hall (1998), The Avenger (1999), The Crusher (2001), Versus the World (2002), Fate of Norns (2004), With Oden on Our Side (2006), and Twilight of the Thunder God (2008)
Amon Amarth, which means 'Mount Doom', a location in Tolkien's Middle-Earth (that's the setting in Lord of the Rings for you non-Tolkien-ites) is a five piece melodic death metal band from Sweden which focuses on fast paced, highly energetic, epic sounding fusions of brutality and melodic metal. The band's lyrical themes are centered on Norse mythology and the Viking Age, and provide the perfect backdrop to the music that the band has created over the past twenty years. Amon Amarth is not a Viking Metal band however, and remain adamant to that end, since Viking Metal is a subset of black metal and not at all in the same vein as what the group produces or has ever intended to create. Still, their combination of epic lyricism, musical brutality and constant melodic evolution has forged them into one of the best and highly recognizable groups of their genre. Amon Amarth has appeared alongside some of modern metals finest, and on some of its grandest stages, including Wacken Open Air, where they will appear for a sixth time in 2012.
Amon Amarth's previous releases include: Once Sent from the Golden Hall (1998), The Avenger (1999), The Crusher (2001), Versus the World (2002), Fate of Norns (2004), With Oden on Our Side (2006), and Twilight of the Thunder God (2008)
Jay's Take on Surtur Rising:
Amon Amarth is 'one of those bands' that was ever present in my teenage years, alongside many others of varying sounds and flavors. Versus the World was one of the records I listened to most as a teenager, with Fate of Norns following suit and With Oden On Our Side coming into play during my early years in university. It's been about four years between then and now, and I had almost completely bypassed their previous release Twilight of the Thunder God for a long time. But leave it to friends and long time fans to remind you for months that Amon's newest release is coming - that was this past winter, and the wait was worth it when March rolled around. Surtur Rising follows the band's two previous records in increasing the range of melody and musicality of the group. Where Amon Amarth would focus primarily on heavy, brutal assaults in their earlier works, they have continued to stretch the bounds of their musicianship to include an array of melodies. Surtur Rising is probably the most 'toned down' record in Amon Amarth's catalog to date, which is not to say it's toned down at all, especially considering the deep commanding growls of Johan Hegg and the hard charging riffs that the band is known for. Still, it's a nod to their evolution withing the melodic death metal genre that they continue to incorporate softer, melodic passages and interludes without ever overdoing it - something that started to appear more noticeably on With Oden On Our Side. The band's past three recordings have been remarkably clean and well produced, but I kind of miss that gritty sound present in their earlier recordings which added more to the dark and brutal aspects of each track. Surtur Rising is definitely one of the finer melodic death metal recordings from the past year. And the cover they did of System of a Down's Aerials - fucking brilliant.
There's also this video of Hegg performing a karaoke version of the song during last years 70,000 Tons of Metal - which was basically a three day cruise and metal festival that I would have sold a leg to go on.
Sample of the Day:
As usual a track off the record, plus as a bonus their cover of Aerials by SOAD.
- J
0 comments:
Post a Comment