The Crusher
(Metal Blade Records)
49:36min
These Viking-Beer-Metalheads of AMON AMARTH have seriously being in a working mood lately with constant good quality albums as well as quite some live-activity! And the work really pays off because the Swedish five-piece is finally getting the deserved attention and most of all progressing a lot as songwriters from release to release. I always somehow missed the really striking, outstanding nature in their older songs but “The Crusher” came out being their best recording to date in my modest personal opinion! ‘Bastards Of A Lying Breed’, ‘Masters Of War’, ‘Risen From The Sea – 2000’ (an old demo track in new recording!) or also ‘Annihilation Of Hammerfest’ are simply well done, catchy mid-paced crushers with very intense guitar-harmonies, annihilating vocals and a helpful powerful production courtesy of Studio Abyss. Oh, by the way, the last song of the album is actually an OK bonus (first printing amount?) cover track of the POSSESSED evergreen ‘Eyes Of Horror’ that has an extremely old-school and aggressive attitude, probably due to the different recording session (Das Boot Studios). All in all a very enjoyable new album by an actually pretty original Swedish melodic Death Metal act that does certainly not belong to the (stylistically) pretty faceless movement of Gothenburg-style bands! They are surely gonna be around soon to crush European stages and prove you wrong if you thought so before…
Leif Jensen
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