AMON AMARTH - The Crusher LP (Brown/Beige Vinyl)

Includes lyric insert and large 2-sided poster.

Along with The Avenger and Once Sent.. Amon Amarth formed something of a holy triad of epic melodic death metal with their third opus The Crusher. What I love about their third album is that it combines everything they had done so far. Forging the depth of their debut with the feral energy unleashed with The Avenger the band nailed us with one of their more complete works.

However while I say more complete I will say that there isn't any truly standout tracks as there were on the previous two albums. Not necessarily a bad thing though, I feel The Crusher maintains an equal measure of quality throughout its runtime. The beauty of this equal measure of quality is that the album makes for a great choice to whack on and sit back to. Especially if you're playing a particularly epic video game, The Crusher makes for a great soundtrack (think Dragon Age or something).

That isn't to say this album merely fades into background noise, it just makes for a great listen from start to finish. However if I were to have to pick out some standout tracks it would be "Bastards of a Lying Breed", "As Long as the Raven Flies" and the stoic "Annihilation of Hammerfest".

Overall this is another quality release from Amon Amarth, although it did see them starting to establish a formula/template that they would begin to rely on. This would also be the last truly great Amon Amarth album for a while. The Crusher serves as a great introduction to the band, and along with Twlight of the Thunder God would be the albums I would recommend to anyone yet to hear them/ trying to get into them.