Amon Amarth - Deceiver Of The Gods

Published June 24 2013

*=Staff's pick	Deceiver Of The Gods* As Loke Falls Father Of The Wolf* Shape Shifter* Under Siege Blood Eagle We Shall Destroy Hel Coming Of The Tide* Warriors Of The North

Genre	Melodic Death Metal	Johan Hegg	Vocals
Tracks	10	Olavi Mikkonen	Guitar
Running time	48 Min.	Johan Söderberg	Guitar
Label	Metal Blade	Ted Lundström	Bass
Release	24 June 2013	Fredrik Andersson	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboard
Producer	Andy Sneap
Similar artists	---

With their ninth studio album, Swedish melodic death metallers Amon Amarth takes a giant step back, closer to their earlier work. With Andy Sneap in the producer's seat, they have weaved new blood into the recording process after a number of albums with Jens Bogren in that position. I guess the band had their reasons, but in my opinion Bogren is a more suitable producer for their music.

Although the opener and title track, Deceiver Of The Gods, is pretty much following the latest albums' trend, this album's melodies as a whole are rather different from what I expected. It's still Amon Amarth all through and believe nothing else, but it's more resemblant to the albums Fate Of Norns and Versus The World and even further back through their career.

With this release we're facing a more raw approach and I miss a bit of that strong, clean, thunderous and crushing force they've presented on the latest albums, Twilight Of The Thunder God and Surtur Rising. Father Of The Wolf is even on the edge to heavy metal, yet with a furious and screaming Johan Hegg, whose voice also go hand in hand with the music, back to earlier days. When speaking vocalists, imagine my surprise when former Candlemass vocalist Messiah Marcolin shows up in Hel. It feels misplaced somehow, yet a cool move to have him singing on this release.

The lyrical contents are as always following the band's written path with stories about Vikings, Norsemen, Norse Gods and death sentences in a brutal and barbaric way, as in Blood Eagle, where supposedly a body face down was ripped at the sides and the ribs were torn straight up to form the shape of two wings.

In conclusion. A strong album and I wasn't expecting anything else from Amon Amarth either. Yet not that totally overwhelming, nor brutally adorable and massively neckbreaking. Aggressive, yes, though necessarily not in that direction that draws much needed attention to their effort. Loyal fans will certainly like this as much as I do, but I also believe that many will miss the appearance of their latest releases as well.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	6	6	7	7

Summary
7 chalices of 10 - Tobbe