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"Here it comes…the mighty storm!" All shall perish in its path! Amon Amarth's fifth full length slab of mighty and cheesy Viking Metal! A Viking Metal categorization doesn't tell the reader much, other than the lyrics being about Vikings and/or Scandinavian mythology. Musically, Amon Amarth take a very death oriented approach (Melodic death would be more precise). The vocals are extremely guttural and blasts and double bass kicks make their way in the music sometimes; however, it appears that the Swedish don't generally like to depart from their dual guitar harmonies, so it gets pretty melodic.

The album starts off with an absolute shredder "An Ancient Sign Of Coming Storm". The song seems to be building up in its entirety and never really hits a climax, always leaving you hanging with climbing riffs, guttural growls and rasps, and awesome dual guitar attacks throughout. The next, more thrashy track maintains the same level of greatness that the first one did, and again, building up to something spectacular. And then we get the title track, which is the best song on the album with breathtaking leads and a kick ass chorus. Now, until here we get a very solid performance with three absolutely smoking tracks. "Pursuit of Vikings" is a pretty good track as well with traditional metal stylings in it, but after the fourth track, it appears the band couldn't keep up and maintain the assault that preceded it. I'd actually say that some of them flat out suck! The last four songs don't do much for me as they are very plain and don't really unleash themselves on any level, but the initial four are so damn good that it just about sneaks the entire album into solid ground.

Fans will probably get a bigger kick out of this than me, but even if you don't love this band, it is difficult not to like some of these songs if you like melodic death in general.