Rare when a band on its sixth album enjoys a critical and commercial breakthrough like Amon Amarth. Long considered an afterthought in the Viking/Pagan metal parade, the band was spinning its proverbial wheels after 2004's rather tepid Fate of Norns. This wasn't lost on the Swedes, as they debated on throwing in the towel on North America to focus on Europe, where even still, they were moderately successful. 2006's magnum opus With Oden On Our Side changed all of this, as the chance combination of more brutal and heroic numbers and the newfound production expertise of Jens Borgen (Symphony X, Daylight Dies, Eluveitie, etc.) literally shot the band's profile through the underground stratosphere.
Even more surprising is that fact With Oden On Our Side wasn't that much different than Fate of Norns, let alone 2001's The Crusher and '03's Versus the World. Call it a second chance from the Nordic Gods, or better yet, catching this diluted epic Pagan metal thing at the right time. Either way, Amon Amarth has paid its dues, reaped the rewards, and now as the daunting task of following With Oden On Our Side with Twilight of the Thunder God.
More accessible and song-oriented than its predecessor, Twilight... sees AA lay off the gas just a little, preferring a more concerted mid-paced strike that is no less vengeful. Numbers like "Live For the Kill," the momentous “Free Will Sacrifice,” “No Fear For the Setting Sun” and climatic closer “Embrace of the Endless Ocean” see Amon Amarth operating like a band with more than a few releases under its belt, unwillingly to make the same record twice.
Bassist Ted Lundstrom phoned Blistering to discuss the aforementioned Twilight… and a variety of additional topics, including their status as a full-time band, and those cute little bobblehead dolls. Yes, Amon Amarth bobbleheads…
Blistering.com: You could have toured a few more years on With Oden…, are you surprised success came this late for Amon Amarth?
Ted Lundstrom: A little bit, yeah. We knew it was a strong album, but I don’t think we expected this much success, especially in North American, which was way better than expected. It has been a great release for us.
Blistering.com: Better yet, you’ve been trying to break the North American market for years, so that might have made it more satisfying.
Lundstrom: We were almost thinking of giving up. After Fate of Norns we said we got to give a couple more tries and if no one understands, we’ll just stay in Europe. It’s been a great last couple of years for the band, so it does feel really satisfying for us.
Blistering.com: Why do you think it took so long for people to pick up on what you were doing? It’s not like With Oden… was all that different than your previous records.
Lundstrom: I have no idea, actually [laughs]. In North America, it’s usually harder for bands to make it big. It guess it’s all about that you have to be in the right spot at the right time and get the right tours. We got the Children of Bodom tour, which helped a lot. We were able to boost our sales with that one. And we were able to play in front of a lot of people and do a lot of shows.
Blistering.com: There was some talk of splitting up around the time of Versus the World. Was there anything in particular that got the band through that rough patch?
Lundstrom: We felt we had some really good music. We didn’t want to give up, even though we were really tired. We wanted to have some kind of revenge; show the world we’re a kick-ass band. That’s what we decided we were on the edge of splitting up. Let’s just go 100% and fuck everybody else and do what we wanted to do.
Blistering.com: How is life as a full-time band treating you?
Lundstrom: It’s pretty comfortable, actually. We’ve been working in this band for over 15 years, so to be able to do this full-time is in someway, the only reason to make this possible. It makes it easier to come up with good albums in a shorter period of time because if we do like we did in the past where we work in the day time, go to the rehearsal room and you’re tired, the only thing you want to do is go home to your girlfriend, wife, or kid. It’s not very productive that way. It takes a lot longer to do an album, but now we’re able to do this as a full-time job which means we get more time with our families and more time to write songs, which is really good I think.
Blistering.com: Was there any sort of trepidation around the move to a full-time band?
Lundstrom: Of course. It’s a tough decision because you have to five guys who are together on a decision like this. You’re never sure if you’re going to get money every month. It’s still a struggle. Some months you get money; others you don’t get any money at all. We all have bills to pay, but I think it was worth it in the end. As it is right, it’s working fine and we can do this a living, which is great.
Blistering.com: As for the new album, one thing that stuck out was how the songs are a little shorter and direct. Any reasoning behind going this route?
Lundstrom: I’m not sure of the short songs. A lot of the songs, we write them and work together with Jens and sometimes the songs tend to get a little too long. We don’t want people to get bored of a song after four or five minutes. We want to people to have the feeling of wanting the press the “repeat” button after hearing the song. We tried to keep the songs tight, but manage to do everything we wanted within the song.
Blistering.com: A song like “Live for the Kill” is unique for Amon Amarth. How did the Apocalyptica guys enter the picture?
Lundstrom: The song was written as a normal song. When we wrote the song, the strings weren’t on our minds. It was something that came about in the studio when we were recording. I don’t remember who it was, but someone suggested it would be great if we came up with a string part here and first of all, Jens said he had some friends in the town where the studio is. So he came up with the crazy idea of asking Apocalytpica. They just got home from a US tour and probably didn’t have anything to do, so we sent them an email and asked, and they were really happy to help us out. It turned out great. I mean, it would have sounded good with a no-name string quartet, but it was way cooler to have them on the album.
Blistering.com: The last song, “Embrace the Endless Ocean” is one of your better epic songs in recent memory.
Lundstrom: That was Oli’s (Mikkonen, guitars) creation. He wanted to have an epic song and we really like those kind of songs. The aim was to make the most epic song we’ve ever done. A lot of moods and stuff like that. I think we did a great job on that one.
