HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Fate Of Norns – Amon Amarth
Sailing out of Stockholm with the force of one hundred oars, AMON AMARTH are on of the most dominant forces in heavy metal today. Forming in 1992 in the bi-municipal suburb of Tumba, and taking their name from the Sindarin – one of the three main elvish languages in Middle-earth alongside Quenya and Tengwar – name of Mount Doom, a volcano in the Mordor region J. R. R. Tolkien‘s Middle-earth. With lyrics based on Viking mythology and history, they have captured the imaginations of thousands of fans, headlined some of the biggest stages and festivals with their giant drakkar prow protruding from the stage and released some of the best melodic death metal records around.
Fate Of Norns – not to be confused with Fate of the Norns, a series of Viking fantasy role-playing games first published in 1993 by Pendelhaven – is one of the defining AMON AMARTH’s defining albums. Released on the 6th September 2004, the album alongside predecessor Verses The World and successor With Oden On Our Side, continued the band’s slower, increasingly melodic and heavier sound. With vocalist Johan Hegg stating “The sound is more mature than on previous albums. I think the foundation for this sound started when we changed studios from Abyss to Berno when we got to working with Berno Paulsson. We improved the sound a lot for this album. We were able to make all the instruments work better together and still make them prominent one by one in the production as well. We were also able to keep the heaviness and brutality we need to be AMON AMARTH.”
The title of the album comes from the Norns, the deities in Norse mythology responsible for shaping the course of human destinies – they can be benevolent or malevolent and are often depicted weaving the threads of life, cutting them when your time has come. In the Völuspá, the three primary Norns Urðr (Wyrd), Verðandi, and Skuld, they draw water from their sacred well to nourish the might Yggdrasil and prevent it from rot.
With this subject matter and the time of the pagan metal surge, in the mid-2000s and Hegg addressed this association in a 2010 interview for The Norse Mythology blog: “We don’t really see ourselves as one of those bands doing pagan folklore music. The reason we took the Viking theme and mythology theme as a lyrical theme for the band was, perhaps, more accidental from the start. When we wrote the first song with Viking lyrics, we felt it was a topic that suited the music that we wanted to write really well…It was something different, as well, from a lot of other bands. In Sweden, I think only BATHORY and UNLEASHED had done anything like it. For us, it was to do something different, to stand out a little bit, to use those lyrics.”
The lyrics on the album encapsulate this mythology more vividly than some of AMON AMARTH’s previous albums. There is a sense of foreboding throughout the album, and you get this feeling of a life on the edge, trusting the gods not to take you too soon. While the well established themes of blood, guts and gore that AMON AMARTH specialised in still remained but it was much more nuanced, melancholic and emotive than the some of the band’s previous. Alongside With Oden On Our Side, Fate Of Norns is a true starting point for the AMON AMARTH we know and love today – moving away from that old school death/black metal sound, ramping up the melodic elements, and tightening up the production. Yet, as is often the trend with these early AMON AMARTH records, the reviews are mostly good but not stand out.
Many noticed how Fate Of The Norns was similar to The Crusher and Verses The World, with Wade Kergan of AllMusic stating “AMON AMARTH‘s fifth full-length isn’t so different than its 2002 predecessor, The Crusher. Musically, Fate Of Norns is Spartan death metal built on epic, anthemic melodies, a perfect example of the IRON MAIDEN/death metal fusion tagged the ‘New Wave of Swedish Heavy Metal’”. While Chris Sessions from Last Rites stating “This record just doesn’t have the kind of pretension that requires dissection. It’s not here to blow your mind. It’s here to make you drink mead and pine for the days when the biggest axe in the strongest hands decided how things would shake out.”
It is clear that AMON AMARTH are looking to go boom or bust on this album, everything is laid bare and the fans and critics noticed this, with Smalley from Sputnick Music stating “Yeah, AMON AMARTH is a fun band fo sure but also a very safe one, since almost every one of their albums fail to stick out from the crowd much. Sure, there are (mostly moderate) differences between them, and everything they’ve released so far has been pretty enjoyable, but they still always feel like they’re cruising by on auto-pilot… always, that is, except for on ‘04’s Fate Of Norns, where Amarthoholics Anonymous really put some effort into their songwriting, infusing each track here with its own unique, distinct personality, which ends up making Norns feel almost like eight mini-concept albums in one”.
With all this in considered, Fate Of Norns is universally considered as a turning point for AMON AMARTH and the album’s two stand out songs Fate Of Norns and The Pursuit Of Vikings have gained classic status amongst AMON AMARTH fans.
Fate Of Norns was originally released on September 6th, 2004 via Metal Blade Records.
Like AMON AMARTH on Facebook.