Photo: Sylwia Makris and Christian Martin Weiss
Thirty-plus years in, Amon Amarth still take their marching orders from a one-eyed god. Oden, the Norse deity of war, wisdom, death, and poetry, has presided over every record the band has made since 1998's Once Sent from the Golden Hall. Their thirteenth gives him a full war-horn salute. The Allfather Awakens, out October 2 via Metal Blade, is ten songs of battle, blood, and Norse myth, each one built to stand on its own.
"We Rule the Waves" surfaced back in July 2025, the band's first new music in three years and now track four here, followed by "Upphaf," its first stab at an acoustic track, a prelude that hangs in the air like a mead hall gone quiet before the doors get kicked in. Then came "Gjallarhorn." The record's true opener and newest of the three, it's a galloping monster of a riff bolted to a chorus sized for a festival field, and its subject is suitably grim: Oden trading an eye at the Well of Wisdom for a glimpse of what's coming.
The Allfather Awakens was built one brick at a time. The band started writing on the road this time out, then tracked the album over two sessions months apart at Jacob Hansen's studio in Denmark, wrapping in March 2026. Guitarist Olavi Mikkonen lays out the method plainly: "We worked on one song at a time," he says, finishing drums, guitars, and vocals on each before touching the next. For this one they also went hunting for an older, warmer tone, mothballing their modern 5150 amps and plugging back into Marshalls. The extra grit shows.
The title track turned out to be the last song written, and it wound up naming the whole record. It runs with "Eight Legs of Thunder," "Kvasir's Blood," "Die With a War Cry," and "Raven God," a songbook that reads like a raid on the Poetic Edda. Tom Thiel handles the cover, his seventh Oden portrait for the band.
PRE-ORDER THE ALLFATHER AWAKENS
None of this is theoretical. Amon Amarth have spent years turning arenas into longships, standing shoulder to shoulder with Slayer, Iron Maiden, and Pantera, headlining Bloodstock twice, and pulling a reported 85,000 at Wacken in 2024. They also handed metal one of its all-time crowd rituals, the "row," where thousands drop to the floor and paddle an invisible longship in unison. The move traces to their 2009 Bloodstock set and has since surfaced everywhere from rival bands' pits to 2026 World Cup terraces.
This autumn, Amon Amarth haul The Allfather Awakens across the UK and Europe behind an entirely new stage production modeled on Oden's Golden Hall.
Amon Amarth: 'The Allfather Awakens' UK & European Tour 2026
UK
Oct 9: Manchester, England (O2 Apollo)
Oct 10: London, England (Eventim Apollo)
Oct 11: Wolverhampton, England (Civic Hall)
Europe
Oct 13: Paris, France (Zenith)
Oct 14: Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg (Rockhal)
Oct 16: Stuttgart, Germany (Schleyer-Halle)
Oct 17: Frankfurt, Germany (Festhalle)
Oct 18: Antwerp, Belgium (Lotto Hall)
Oct 20: Den Bosch, Netherlands (Mainstage)
Oct 21: Hamburg, Germany (Sporthalle)
Oct 23: Gothenburg, Sweden (Scandinavium)
Oct 24: Stockholm, Sweden (Hovet)
Oct 26: Helsinki, Finland (Ice Hall)
Oct 27: Tallinn, Estonia (Unibet Arena)
Oct 29: Gliwice, Poland (PreZero Arena Gliwice)
Oct 30: Leipzig, Germany (Quarterback Immobilien Arena)
Oct 31: Oberhausen, Germany (Rudolf Weber Arena)
Nov 2: Budapest, Hungary (Barba Negra)
Nov 3: Vienna, Austria (Gasometer)
Nov 4: Bamberg, Germany (Brose Arena)
Nov 6: Prague, Czech Republic (O2 Universum)
Nov 7: Berlin, Germany (Velodrom)
Nov 8: Munich, Germany (Zenith)
Nov 10: Milan, Italy (Alcatraz)
Nov 11: Zurich, Switzerland (The Hall)
Nov 13: Barcelona, Spain (Sant Jordi Club)
Nov 14: Madrid, Spain (Vistalegre)
Nov 15: Lisbon, Portugal (Sala Tejo)
