Metal
Metal Blade Records · 2 October 2026
“Upphaf” (4:32) is track five and the first acoustic song Amon Amarth have ever put out. Johan Hegg speaks it more than he sings it, with clean guitars up front and the drums out of the room, and what comes out sits closer to Nordic folk than to anything else in their catalogue. None of the ballad moves you would expect turn up in it.
The album lands four years and two months after “The Great Heathen Army” (August 2022) and is their thirteenth studio record. The band say they worked song by song this time, not moving on until each one was finished. Thirteen albums in, they let themselves record a track with no drums and put it in the middle of the record, which is where it shows most.
“Gjallarhorn” (5:14) opens on a “woah-oh” chorus and a cavalry-charge riff built for a room full of people. “Kvasir’s Blood” (4:26) starts on a rowing rhythm before it opens into the chorus. “We Rule the Waves” (3:51) is the shortest and the most brazen of the lot. “Oden’s Hunt” (4:23) rides a double kick that never lets up, and “Ascending Like an Eagle” (6:44) closes on the longest piece here.
Eight of the ten tracks run between 3:29 and 4:36. The record is built on a single song length, and “Upphaf” works in good part because it breaks it. “Ascending Like an Eagle” is the only one reaching for another scale, and it is also the one that moves least per minute: six and three-quarter minutes that finish where they started. Forty-six minutes in total, three more than the previous album.
They bring it to the Sant Jordi Club in Barcelona on 13 November.
Rating: 7.7/10
Text by Roger Estivill