words @killer.solo.music
The bassist has watched Amon Amarth grow from Swedish death metal hopefuls sleeping in vans to one of metal’s biggest fucking machines — and somehow they’re still having fun.
Thirty years.
Thirteen albums.
Thousands of shows.
More Vikings than you can shake a fucking axe at.
Somewhere along the way, Amon Amarth stopped being a bunch of Swedish kids making heavy music and became an international metal fucking institution. But according to bassist Ted Lundström, there was never some master plan.
“We had no really kind of like visions more than just the next step.”
And honestly, that might be the secret.
When Lundström joined Amon Amarth in the early ’90s, the idea of doing what they’re doing now was basically science fiction. There were no stadium-sized productions, no enormous touring machines and certainly no fucking guarantee that five blokes making Swedish death metal would still be doing it three decades later.
They just kept moving.
One album.
One tour.
One country.
One increasingly ridiculous goal at a time.
Eventually they reached the point where the band quit their day jobs and decided to find out what would happen if they actually went all in.
“We had no families, we had no loans, no house, no nothing. We were just — we could do anything we wanted.”
That meant sleeping in vans, eating whatever could be afforded and discovering that a beer and a bag of crisps can apparently constitute lunch when you’re young enough and stupid enough.
It also meant building something rather than having it handed to them.
“I don’t want to be a band that gets big overnight.”
Three decades later, that slow climb has produced one of metal’s most recognisable live spectacles.
From the audience, an Amon Amarth show looks like someone gave a Viking an unlimited production budget and absolutely no adult supervision.
Ships. Fire. Giant fucking Vikings. Pyro. Thousands of people losing their minds.
Backstage?
An industrial operation.
Lundström says the band are actually the easy part. The real army is the crew working behind the scenes to make the whole thing happen.
Before a major tour, the entire band and crew gather for a full rehearsal, running the production as close to the real thing as possible — including the main pyro — before unleashing it on the unsuspecting masses.
And then there’s the new album.
The Allfather Awakens, released October 2 through Metal Blade Records, is album number thirteen and another step in a band that has somehow managed to evolve without losing the thing that made people care in the first place.
The writing process changed this time around. Rather than waiting until touring was finished, songs began taking shape while the band were still on the road.
Then they went into the studio with producer Jacob Hansen and worked differently again — focusing on individual songs rather than treating the album like one enormous production block.
For Lundström, that’s part of why the finished record still feels fresh even to the people who made it.
“You never really know how it’s going to sound.”
And then there’s “Upphaf” — the acoustic song.
Yes.
Amon Amarth.
Acoustic guitars.
After thirty years of increasingly enormous riffs and enough distortion to frighten livestock, the band decided to strip things back.
It’s exactly the kind of move that could have gone spectacularly fucking wrong.
Instead, it works.
Because after thirty years, being heavy apparently isn’t just about being louder, faster or more brutal.
Lundström put it perfectly when talking about how his own relationship with music has changed:
“More of an emotional connection to the music rather than a loudness and a brutal impact.”
That might be the most revealing thing he said.
The teenage Ted wanted more distortion.
More volume.
More speed.
The Ted who has spent three decades travelling the planet has apparently discovered that sometimes the quieter bits hit harder.
And despite everything that has changed — the music industry, the technology, the way bands promote themselves, the way people consume music — Amon Amarth are still moving forward.
Still writing.
Still touring.
Still building bigger fucking stages.
Still figuring out what comes next.
And maybe that’s the real story behind The Allfather Awakens.
Not a band desperately trying to reinvent itself.
Not a band trapped by its own mythology.
Just five musicians who have been doing this for thirty years, still curious enough to try something different, still stubborn enough to keep going, and still having enough fun to make an acoustic song after spending three decades teaching the world how to fucking gallop.
And apparently, if the Viking raid comes tomorrow, Ted reckons he’s the first one getting killed.
At least he’s honest.
The Allfather Awakens is out now via Metal Blade Records.
This is the gospel.
I bite crowd surfers.
Killer.
