AMON AMARTH — Twilight of the Thunder God (review)

AMON AMARTH — Twilight of the Thunder God album cover Album · 2008 · Melodic Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
UMUR
"Twilight of the Thunder God" is the 7th full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Amon Amarth. The album was released through Metal Blade Records in September 2008. For Amon Amarth Tthe album worked as a consolidation of their position as one of the most successful contemporary death metal acts. A position they earned with the predecessor "With Oden on Our Side (2006)". An album that even made it to the Billboard charts. Before that Amon Amarth had more of a cult following. While "With Oden on Our Side" gave the band great success, "Twilight of the Thunder God" is an even more successful album in terms of sales.

If you are familiar with Amon Amarth, the music style on the album isn´t going to surprise you one bit. This is melodic viking themed death metal like Amon Amarth have more or less delivered since day one (they apparently played grindcore in their formative years, but that was before releasing albums). We´re not talking melodeath here, but rather a heavy, simple structured and effective melodic death metal style with anthemic choruses. It´s not every day you´ll hear death metal with sing along choruses. Tracks like the powerful opening title track or the heavy "Guardians of Asgaard" (which features a guest vocal performance by Entombed frontman Lars Göran Petrov) are examples of when the formula works well, but there are also more standard quality tracks on the album, that don´t stand out as much. It´s a bit of a shame really because when Amon Amarth shine, they shine brightly.

The musicianship are generally strong and the deep growling vocals by frontman Johan Hegg are powerful and add an epic element to the music which of course suits the viking themed lyrics well. "Twilight of the Thunder God" is a well produced, well performed and for the most part really well composed melodic death metal album. If the band were able to make all tracks stand out like the best tracks on this album, they could really go far. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.
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