Well, as DGR wrote in a message I just saw, “In case you guys were worried, it appears that Amon Amarth’s new cd will in fact be about vikings.” Whew, that’s a relief.
Today, the band disclosed that Deceiver Of The Gods is the title of their new album, and that it will be released in June via Metal Blade Records. Andy Sneap, handled the production and there will apparently be a guest appearance by former Candlemass singer Messiah Marcolin, which is intriguing.
Metal Blade also unveiled the album’s cover art, which is supposed to depict “the last battle between the Gods and Loki who arrives at Vigridr field accompanied by the army of the dead during Ragnarok, the end of the world.” The event, of course, is a badass slice of legend. However, I must say that the cover art is not quite as badass as the event it is supposed to depict. Maybe it will grow on me.
What do you think?
UPDATE: The album’s title track is now up for streaming and free download. There’s a separate NCS post about that here.
44 Responses to “AMON AMARTH REVEALS NEW ALBUM TITLE (“DECEIVER OF THE GODS”) AND QUESTIONABLE COVER ART”
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I like it, quit whining.
Cover sucks. You also suck.
All of Amon Amarth’s album covers suck. In fact, Amon Amarth sucks. As does Odin (or “Oden” as people who suck spell it).
Two words: your mother.
Aaahahahahahaha!
Ha
Its spelled Odin, Oden, Odhinn and Woden among others…please see yourself out now
I liked the Surtur Rising cover, and I’m okay with the Loki figure and the dark clouds massing on this new one, but the ram-drawn chariot coming out of the sky looks too much like comic book art, you can barely see that army of the dead, and the whole thing just doesn’t look apocalyptic enough for Ragnarok.
Twilight and Surter both had extremely epic cover art…I dont find this to be as strong as either of those covers. It seems almost plain to me
Uh… yeah. Twilight of the Thunder God is the most epic thing to epic its epic epicness all over Earth’s epic face…
fuckin’ epic.
I don’t mind the art. It’s very fitting for an AA album. I think the text placement is a bit large, overbearing, and distracting. But other than that this is pretty much what I would expect from an AA album. I mean, they’re basically power metal disguised as melo-death, and there’s nothing wrong with that in my books.
That being said, it does seem almost TOO typical for them, whereas the album art for (imo) their best album “With Oden On Our Side” was elegant and understated for a death metal album. It was very fitting for an album that seemed to have a lot more emotion tied into it. It’s been a downward slide since, even if the music has been consistent. I’ll wait until the new track drops tomorrow to see if they’re going to throw us a curveball (highly doubtful considering their winning album-selling formula).
Your right about them being formulaic — most of the songs from their recent albums sound very similar, but man, it’s a formula I’m hooked on. Just like cough syrup, I could drink it all day! Wait . . . what did I just say . . .
This band… my goodness how bad they are.. or rather, how bad they’ve been since Versus The World. Hollywood-style inspired Faux-Nordic mythology, run-of-the-mill almost breakdown inspired songwriting and beards. Lets not forget the apparent requirement of scruffy beards when delving into the realm of Hollywood-style viking lands… Yes, almost like Lemmy without his Jack Daniels.
Coming from Iceland, this kind of stuff makes me cringe. Fuck these guys.
Bah. Both With Oden On Our Side and Twilight Of The Thunder God were great albums.
Curmudgeon.
Yes and no. There are a couple of songs on each that are alright, but delve into specifics of their presentation and none of it holds water by a damn sight. And I guess I don’t have to go further into the utter awfulness that Surtur Rising was/is.
Yeah…what the fuck do a bunch of guys from Sweden know about Norse mythology. Dont be a tool…you dont like the band fine, but Johan Hegg is cleadly aware of his heritage and for the parts he dosnt know Im sure his sister, you know the follower of asatru who wrote Thousand Years of Oppression, is more than capable of filling.in the blanks
GO BACK TO BED GRANDPA, YOU’RE DRUNK
Amon Amarth can do no wrong. The cover is, of course, the greatest ever. Questioning them is like questioning Metal itself.
Amon Amarth just posted an alternate cover on their facebook, https://www.facebook.com/OfficialAmonAmarth
Some may like it better.
Hmm, not sure how that ended up being a reply here…
Oh shit. The warriors are rolling in their graves in Valhalla.
With Oden on Our Side, that was amazing.
Their last album Surtur Rising however was more average to me, so I hope this one is good, Messiah being in it is also cool.
As for the album art, it’s great, would’ve been more epic if there was a army coming from the sky also, but honestly, it doesn’t really warrant moaning.
I don’t like this cover at all. The concept is good, but good part of it looks… cheap. Composition is also strange, this could be way more dynamic. The cover for “Twilight of the thunder god” was simple, but effective, and the cover for “Surtur Rising” was great. This one is way behind those two covers.
^^ This
I agree. It looks like they were heading in the direction of Twilight and Surter then they took a hard turn at bad cut-and-paste alley.
The cover could probably be better, but who cares? It’s goddamn Amon Amarth people! Let’s get drunk and pretend we’re vikings!
The music will probably be about as Amon Amarth as Amon Amarth gets and to be honest, I enjoy most of their stuff so that is fine by me. The art is alright but I agree that there’s a little bit of hoke to it; it might just be that I’ve been analyzing a lot of video game artwork lately because they seem to use this dynamic a ton but the art 101 blue/orange contrast via color wheel just seems to throw me for a loop.
I like the comic book style art. Lightening kicks ass even if coming from a ram driven chariot. More than likely the picture wraps around to the back, as its probably one of the folding envelope cases. The army is probably there in all its glory, and if not the army is probably on the inside cover.
Well, I’d forgotten the fact that we’re only looking at half of the panorama. There’s hope yet.
I thought Oden fought Loki in the Final Battle because Thor dies fighting Jormungand? What’s the order of deaths during Ragnorok? Norse mythology nerds help a brother out, my knowledge of the Edda is entirely from the PS1 game Valkyrie Profile.
Thor fights Jormungand..wins, but dies
Odin fights Fenrir the wolf..loses and gets eaten, his son Vidar steps up and splits the lower jaw from the upper jaw of Fenrir..stabs his heart killing the wolf
Heimdall fights Loki and they kill one another
Freyr fights Surter, but without his sword (given to his friend as a gift) he dies
Theres a few gods who survive…Vidar and Vali (Odins sons)..Magni and Modi (Thors sons)..Baldr will supposedly be resurrected after Ragnarok as well
As far as I’m aware the whole “some gods survive and Baldur brings about a new golden age” thing was actually a product of Christian missionary work slowly infiltrating Norse themes so as to pave the way for Christian religious dominance. The original version of Ragnarok… everyone dies, everything ends.
Nope..Ragnarok has always been about a new beginning after this world ends. Its pretty clearly stated in the in the Poetic Edda that several of the gods (the ones I mentioned above) survive.
The Baldr part is never clearly stated one way or the other, but it is implied
…sorry, not trying to be a know-it-all. Ive just been a real big mythology buff since I was a little kid
Yeah, me too. And I enjoy the discussion. However I was reasonably certain that these days a lot of scholars thought that there had been a distinct Christianising influence creeping into the Poetic Edda and not just the Prose Edda (which has been pretty definitively proven to have been insidiously infiltrated by Christian ideology).
Hah…I was just replying to this below. Theres definitely people who think thats a possibility, but theres really know way to know. The written copies we have now, didnt appear until about 200 years after most people had become Christian so its really nothing more than conjecture because we have nothing else to compare it to
err…”no way to know”..
I mean..Baldr’s resurrection has extremely strong Christian imagery to it no doubt, but thats only kind of hinted at in in the Poetic Edda unlike in the Prose.
The creation of a new world though, considering how far the Vikings traveled and the number of religions who believe in a cycle of death/rebirth thats something they could have already believed or something they assimilated into their belief system long before Christianity became a factor
Dang, the Cliff’s Notes version of Ragnarok. I’ve been waiting for this for so long. 🙂
Well just to clarify things a little bit…The Poetic Edda is probably the most comprehensive work we have on Nordic myths. Theyre written poems from much earlier works that were passed down verbally..the problem is they were written down about 200 years after the vast majority of people had converted and most of the people doing the writing were probably Christian.
So Andy does have a point..there is the very real possibility that what we have was influenced by the Christians who were writing things down, but theres really no way of knowing how much, or even if changes were made to the original stories because we have nothing else to compare it to
Damn, Im a fucking nerd
The Christianization of scandinavia took several hundred years, and even after countries were fully converted, there were still alot of norse rites and traditions being followed. A forced baptism doesn’t change ones beliefs, and there are several archaeological to support this.
Both in Norway and in Sweden there is not a strong sense of unity between north and south, even now when the world is so small. Northern Norway is a lot closer to Northern Sweden, Both culturally and emotionally. The fact that the crown was and is very pro-christian probably worked to their own disadvantage. I can’t say how it was a thousand years ago, but the last 200 years there has been a feeling up here that the state and crown 2500 KM down south don’t have the right, the knowledge or the ability to rule or govern us. You don’t have to go more than 20 years back in time to find ads from Oslo that said “Room for rent. No northerners”
I think that cultural gap, the North-South hostility, and a lot of sami people and tradition, kept christ from ever getting a good grip up here. Hell, most of the sami NEVER converted to christianity, even after the Norwegianization and forced assimilation.
I know that the victor writes the history, to a large extent. And it is impossible to know the motives of the people originally writing the books, tales and poems, but having romanticized Norse history/mythology/culture for most of my life, i like to think that they could have found out what they wanted and needed to know, without it being poisoned by christianity.
But do think it is reasonable to think that christianity started seeping into norse mythology and culture even in the early 800s, with a lot of thralls being christian.
Forced conversion dosnt make them Christian, but it does make their ability to practice their own religion much harder to do in public…i.e. verbally passing on your stories would be much harder to do, probably limited to families as opposed to whole villages
The people who translated and wrote down a good chunk of them would have probably been Christian monks…its not really a matter of could they have found out, its a matter of did they write these things down accurately..its also a matter of how much, if any cultural/religious assimilation was at play when the poems were recorded…how much had the stories changed throughout the years (think of the kids game “telephone” on a worldwide scale over centuries)
Also..I know your referring to Norway and Sweden, but the oldest copy of the Poetic Edda we currently have was discovered in Iceland so even if the Northern areas of those two countries were left relatively untouched by Christianity we still have nothing of similar age from those areas to compare it to
That being said…I personally believe the Poetic Edda is a pretty accurate description of the Norse myths. While you could probably find Christian influences if you were really looking, theyre very subtle especially when compared to the Prose version. So to bring it all back around again…I do believe that Ragnarok was always about a cycle of death and then rebirth
Yeah, I realized that they are from Iceland as i was on my porcelain throne, contemplating how precious little i really know about the subject. There is very little about it in Norwegian schools, outside of Þrymskviða and the Battle of Stiklestad.
Going to dig up my grandfathers old Heimskringla. Now that I’m finally done with my education, I can start actually learning stuff. 😛
The real question is, where are. Iron Man et al during all this?
Do you think they’ll be on the back cover?
They don’t show up until the sequel.
What this comment thread just turned into is why I love this guldurn site.