The long wait for new music from Swedish Viking death-metal battalion Amon Amarth is finally over with today's release of wicked war anthem "Raven's Flight." With its forward-charging guitars, martial attack and lyrics full of "distant shores" and "crimson grins," the track stands tall among a deep catalog filled with chalice-raising odes to the thunder of the ancient gods. "Raven's Flight" serves as the lead single off the group's highly anticipated album Berserker, which was recorded at Sphere Studios in North Hollywood with producer Jay Ruston (Anthrax, Stone Sour) and is due May 3rd via Metal Blade.
"With the last record, I wrote a complete fucking movie script and we turned it into an album," Amon Amarth frontman Johan Hegg recently told Revolver, referencing 2016's Jomsviking. This time around, I didn't have any of those ideas but we also didn't want to do a concept thing, either. Jomsviking turned out so well, so if you then start working on another concept album and try to top that, it would almost be impossible — unless you have a really great story lined up that you can do that with. But I didn't, so it didn't make sense. I was a bit lazy on this one — I waited for the music to be done so I could see where it would take me."
Amon Amarth celebrated a quarter century late last year with the career-spanning documentary The Pursuit of Vikings: 25 Years in the Eye of the Storm. Berserker will mark their 11th studio album — see the full track listing below.
Berserker track list:
01. Fafner's Gold
02. Crack the Sky
03. Mjolner, Hammer of Thor
04. Shield Wall
05. Valkyria
06. Raven's Flight
07. Ironside
08. The Berserker at Stamford Bridge
09. We Can Set Our Sails
10. When Once Again
11. Wings of Eagles
12. Into the Dark
