AMON AMARTH keep steering their Viking vessel in the right direction while they venture into deeper waters. Their brand spanking new album, "Twilight Of The Thunder God", takes the helm of their already illustrious career with perhaps their best material yet. Not to say that they've reached their peak (far from it), but the band are enjoying a heightened flow of success and a rightfully earned spot in the monarchy of modern day Metal. Men of strength, honour and pride, AMON AMARTH will stop at nothing to do what they do best for as long as they can, and if their achievements thus far have anything to do with it, they'll be riding the waves for some time yet. Guitarist Johan Söderberg relays his thoughts on the band's future, along with the new album and touring plans.

Let's first talk about your new video for "Twilight Of The Thunder God". How did the filming go and how did it all come together?

"The idea I think was... the story of this song is kind of hard to make in a video because it's so mythological. There are too many strange creatures in the lyrics, so we basically thought that the idea was to make fierce battle scenes to go (along with) the music. The lyrics are not really for video - the story for the lyrics. So we flew down to Poland for a couple of days and they had this big reenactment of a village there. People from all over the world come there to this festival every year - to have big battles. Then some of the guys were participating in this battle. They stayed a couple of days extra after and made all the fighting scenes in the video, and they set up the stage for the band as well. So it was pretty easy."

It looks like you did some shooting during the day for the battle scenes, then the band at night.

"Yeah. It was very windy. It was like a sandstorm almost. It's no wind machines in the video. It's all natural wind."

That kind makes it more realistic that way.

"Yeah."

Now the props used in the video, did you have all those made up or were they already available to you?

"The guys there, they made these kind of battle things on a regular basis. All the weapons and stuff they own themselves and most of them, they make them themselves as well."

You guys keep getting better and better and I don't know how that's possible. One thing I do notice about this new album is that Johan's (Hegg) voice has progressed even more. I don't know whether it's the effects on the vocals but it's much more demonic-like than before.

"It's not any effect on the vocals that makes that. It's basically the producer we worked with (Jens Bogren). He is very good at telling Johan how to place the lines and how he is supposed to do the vocals. He's a good vocal coach. You're right, he has progressed very much since we started working with Jens."

Now who came up with the title of the album, "Twilight Of The Thunder God"?

"I think it was Olavi (Mikkonen - guitar)."

That's a really great name. Before you came up with the title, did you guys have an idea what the album was going to be about?

"Yes. We had the image of the cover... that was the thing we came up with really early, because we have a statue in Stockholm where we have this Thor's fight with a serpent. That's the first idea we had. We wanted to have this as a cover, this story about when Thor fights the serpent. So that's basically how that came up, and then after that we came up with the title. The title grew out from the artwork."

Now you and Olavi do phenomenal guitar work on this album. Did you guys work together in developing the melodies, the riffs and the solos?

"You know I sit at my home studio and he sits in his home studio and we make riffs separately, and then we go to the rehearsal place and there we put stuff together. Sometimes I make one complete song or sometimes we make like 50/50 in the same song. It's like half Oli's riff and half my riff, in some songs. But some songs he makes complete and I make some other songs complete. But usually the ones that I like most are the ones that we make 50/50 in the same song. Our writing styles collide in a nice way I think. Those songs are the most dynamic."

How long did it take you to record this album from start to finish?

"It took seven weeks. We were in the studio every day for seven weeks. We worked from eight in the morning until eight in the evening. That's like 12 hour shifts for seven weeks. We had like one day a week off. So yeah, six days a week for seven weeks at 12 hours every day."

Wow! That's a lot. That's 42 days - a lot of work. Well, the result speaks for itself. You guys never cease to impress me personally. I remember speaking with Johan in 2004 when "Fate Of Norns" came out, and at that time I think most of you guys had day jobs or something, and then when I spoke with him again last year he had said that you no longer have those day jobs. He said that that was the goal of the band - obviously to keep making it bigger and bigger. Here you are four years later and AMON AMARTH is one of the most prominent names in heavy Metal for sure.

"It's very nice to hear. Yeah, it's very nice to be able to concentrate now 100% on just writing music, and it makes it much more easier to perfect it even more."

So you guys have a real extensive touring run here. After you're done your North American run, you're doing a European tour.

"Yes. We're supporting SLAYER on the 'Unholy Alliance' European tour for the whole of November. Then we will do some gigs in December (in Germany). In four days in a row we're gonna play the first four albums, one every night. We're trying to rehearse some of the old stuff we haven't played in a long time (laughs). It's funny. And after that I think we're going to do very much more touring. We're going to do a headlining European tour and then we're going to go back to the U.S. once more, and maybe Australia. It's basically the rest of the year until next summer we're gonna be on tour."

That's going to be a lot of work for this album. Do you think you are going to be touring the most for this album than any previous one?

"Probably, but on the last album we did 180 shows. So I think maybe we're going to do 200 on this album."

That's a lot of touring. More than six months of actual touring.

"Yeah! (laughs). It's going to be a brutal schedule. I think we're going to have shows every week in December."

So Johan, what's next for the band? Where do you see the band in the next five years?

"I think we're going to do what we always have done - just trying to go and progress all the time, the same with the songwriting - always trying to make better songs. Hopefully be able to do this for a long time the future."

So that's your long-term goal to continue AMON AMARTH into the future and just keep going at it?

"Yep."

Good to hear. I think Metal needs AMON AMARTH.

"Yeah, I hope so. I feel like I'm going to do this for as long as I feel that I can make another step up. If it gets to that people are not going to like us anymore in five years or something and we're going to go backwards, then I think then maybe we (would) quit. But as long as it's going to continue upwards, we're going to keep on doing it." [FIN]