Amon Amarth singer Johan Hegg has revealed that the band recorded one more song than made it onto their new album, The Allfather Awakens, and that it is the first time they have ever left a finished recording behind.
Hegg spoke about the record in a new interview with Thomas Moser of German radio station “Rock Antenne“. The Allfather Awakens will be released on October 2 through Metal Blade Records.
When Moser suggested that Amon Amarth never seem to struggle to come up with plenty of strong material, Hegg replied (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “That’s just so far from the truth. When it comes to the musical aspect, I think it’s better obviously to talk to Olavi [Mikkonen] and Johan Söderberg because those are the guys who write the music. But from a band perspective, we never really write music that we don’t feel is gonna end up on the album. So if there are 10 songs on the album, we wrote 10 songs, not 12, not 15. We wrote 10 songs. Having said that, actually, we recorded 11 songs for this album. There was one song where we felt that it has potential; it just didn’t come out as good as we wanted it to. So we took it and we put it aside for now. And it’s a first. It’s never happened before.”
Asked whether he still feels nervous before new music comes out, Hegg said: “Both yes and no, I think, unfortunately, is the answer to that, because if it was up to me, the minute we close the door to the studio, I would like to release the songs to the audience. ‘Cause I think waiting for it, it’s almost painful, ’cause you have these things, you have this album that you feel so good about and you wanna share it with your fans. So you’re very anxious to get it out there, and you’re excited. But in a way also, yeah, obviously there’s an element of nervousness because, obviously, I know what I feel about these songs, but will it go across to the audience? Will they feel the same way? Will they think it’s as great as I do?”
He went on: “At least from my perspective, when you work on music or songs or an album, it’s just us five [members of the band]. It’s just five people. We write the music we wanna hear, but we have no idea what other people like. We’re in our little box working. So what we do try to do is when we have songs recorded, we try to get friends and family to listen to them, to get some feedback. But, yeah, it’s difficult… We want the people to love the music. That’s a no-brainer. But at the end of the day, I think the way I see it, anyways, is that as long as I’m happy with it, I have to be pleased no matter how people react to it. Obviously you want everybody to love it, but you know that’s not gonna be the case — not everybody’s gonna love all the songs. So it’s just the way it is. Music is subjective. It is all about feelings and where you are as a person and who you are as a person. So, people are gonna have opinions. It’s just the way it is.”
The Allfather Awakens is Amon Amarth‘s 13th studio album, following their 1998 debut Once Sent From The Golden Hall. It was produced by Danish producer Jacob Hansen and recorded at his studio in Denmark over two sessions several months apart. The band started writing while still on tour, recorded the first batch of songs in spring 2025 and finished recording in March 2026.
For the guitars, the band moved away from the 5150 amplifiers they had used before and went back to Marshall amps for a less modern sound. The title track, “The Allfather Awakes“, was the final song written for the record.
Norse god Odin, spelled Oden by the band, again runs through the album’s lyrics and artwork, although the record is not a concept album. The songs are built around historically inspired stories of battle and sacrifice. The cover, a portrait of Odin, was painted by Tom Thiel, who has now created seven of the band’s album covers.
The band have already released “Gjallarhorn“, “Eight Legs Of Thunder“, “We Rule The Waves” and “Upphaf” as singles, each with a music video.
Amon Amarth are Hegg, guitarists Olavi Mikkonen and Johan Söderberg, bassist Ted Lundström and drummer Jocke Wallgren.
The Allfather Awakens Tracklist:
- “Gjallarhorn“
- “Eight Legs Of Thunder“
- “Kvasir’s Blood“
- “We Rule The Waves“
- “Upphaf“
- “Die With A War Cry“
- “Raven God“
- “The Allfather Awakes“
- “Oden’s Hunt“
- “Ascending Like An Eagle“
