Amon Amarth : The Action Recon Interview

Amon Amarth are a Death Metal band from Sweden who primarily concentrate on Norse and Viking mythology in both their lyrics and album imagery. They have been plundering and pillaging the world since 1992 and now have seven full length albums under their belts. On March 29th their eighth full length “Surtur Rising” will be released in North America and Action Recon wanted to sit down with founding member and bass player TED LUNDSTRÖM and get the lowdown on the new record, touring and where the inspiration came for the thundering music contained within “Surtur Rising”. Check it out below and “Surtur Rising” will be available March 29th in stores on iTunes and Amazon.

1) What were the main influences when writing Surtur Rising both musically and lyrically?

Well on previous albums like “Twilight Of The Thunder God” we had written about other gods like Thor and Odin. So this time we thought lets find another character in Norse mythology, but one that was much less known then the famous gods. So when we picked “Surtur” who is the fire giant and we started to think about album covers and the whole thing came together as a really natural process. Then musically we do what we always do and meet in the rehearsal room and go over ideas and start writing songs based on the theme of the album.

2) The art work on Surtur Rising is one of the most epic cover pieces we have ever seen. Was this meant to echo the feel of the album?

Oh ya we wanted to come up with very powerful album art work this time. It goes along with writing better songs and more powerful songs to go along with the album art work and we also wanted to match or beat past album art work as well as write better songs. So we just threw some ideas around about “Surtur” the fire giant and him throwing fire and then hired a talented artist to bring those ideas to life. We knew it was going to be really good and are really happy with the way it turned out.

3) Amon Amarth has released many videos in the past. Are we going to see a video for this album and what song will the video be for?

We are going to do a video, but we have not decided on a song or a theme as of yet. We have been really busy rehearsing right now for the upcoming tours and stuff so we have not had too much time to decide what song and how we are going to go about doing it. But as soon as we have the song decided then we will be doing a video.

For those not familiar with the amazing quality of Amon Amarth videos check out the video for “Twilight Of The Thunder God” below.

4) What are your touring plans right now? How will the tours work and who will you be supporting or supported by while on the road?

We are going to be starting off supporting “Children Of Bodom” in England, Scotland and Ireland. After that we head off to North America and will actually be touring by ourselves, we will not have any other bands out on the road with us. It will be a full night of Amon Amarth. We will be playing the new album in its entirety from start to end and then there will be a break and we come back and play another full show in the same night, but the older songs and material from all our albums.

Check out Amon Amarth performing “Fate Of Norns” live below. Do not miss them live.

5) On Surtur you have some very heavy songs and some very epic songs, the album really opens up and shows what Amon Amarth is capable of. Was it the goal of the band to really push themselves on this album and evolve as musicians and song writers? Did you want to become a little more diverse?

Its always a goal to make a more diverse album and when we started Surtur Rising we actually were making a more aggressive album. That being said the more epic songs always come and when mixed together the album sounds more dynamic with the fast, heavier songs leading into slower ones and so on. You could say we had like half a plan, but it was not really a full plan because we wanted to let the writing and songs take their own course.

6) The song “Doom Over Dead Men” has strings on it and it really brings across the melancholy of the song in general. Was this why you used strings on this track?

We had used strings on the last album, but not so much by themselves as they are on “Doom Over Dead Men”. We wrote that song to be kind of slow and knew that adding the strings in would really enhance the feeling of the song. We had them in the song just enough to make the song better, but without the strings taking over the song too much. The goal was to make the song bigger and more epic and we feel we accomplished this with the use of the strings.

7) You have worked with the same producer on your last three albums. What is it you enjoy so much about working with Jens? Does he bring out the best in the band?

Yes we enjoy very much working with him and he is very tough when it comes to recording and getting things right, you really have to work hard to make him satisfied. Also he always has good ideas, we had about half an album done with some demos as well and we sent that off to him and he came back with some great ideas of what to do and where to steer the album. We worked with him through the whole writing process and it has been very good for us so far. When we started to make this album we were not sure if we were going to use Jens and we thought about a few other people to work with, but in the end we decided we would get the most from working with him and it has been very good.

8 The song “Slaves Of Fear” seems to step away lyrically and tackle more of a political/religious problem. What was the reason for this?

Religion has always been a subject that we feel strong about and especially the bad side of religion that is always so prominent. It creates so much war and fucking bad things and we have written on these subjects before, but this time we wanted to just take a straight on approach with religion. Also when writing a whole album on one subject or character like Surtur sometimes you can run out of material and you need to add in some other elements that are important.

9) “War Of The Gods” could almost be taken as a metaphor for what is actually going on in the world today. So many wars with no gain and only massive loss of human lives. Is this a comparison Amon Amarth was trying to draw when writing this song?

Well I can not say with 100% certainty because I did not write the lyrics to that song, but our singer Johan Hegg often makes comparisons like that. He likes to comment on modern age by using old tales and stories to draw similarities to our world today. The song is about the first war that happened between the gods and like you said their is so much killing and to what end? It could definitely be held in comparison to the world we are in today and I would say Johan probably had that in mind when he wrote the song.

Check out “War Of The Gods” now.

10) What is your favorite track on the new album and why?

I have a few from the album, but I would say “A Beast Am I” is my favorite. The song has some very cool imagery in it and is really fun to play and is very heavy and aggressive as well. So I would say that one is my favorite right now.

11) That wraps up the interview Ted. Is there anything else you wanted to add or last words you would like to get out there?

I just want to say that we are looking forward to getting out and playing in front of everyone and that we have probably two to two and half years of touring ahead of us. So we hope to see everyone out there on the road going crazy and having a good time. Enjoy the new album and thank you very much for the interview.

Tour Dates for “Surtur Rising” North America.

Related posts:

1. New Amon Amarth Song “War Of The Gods”
2. Amon Amarth release new song “Slaves Of Fear”
3. Amon Amarth Reveal New Album Art and Track Listing
4. Amon Amarth “Surtur Rising” album preview
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