page_title: Viking metal
section_title: Amon Amarth and Unleashed
hierarchical_section_title: Viking metal / History / Amon Amarth and Unleashed
caption_attribution_description: Unleashed at Party.San Metal Open Air 2013
context_page_description: Viking metal is a style of heavy metal music characterized by a lyrical and thematic focus on Norse mythology, Norse paganism, and the Viking Age. Viking metal is quite diverse as a musical style, to the point where some consider it more a cross-genre term than a genre, but it is typically seen as black metal with influences from Nordic folk music. Common traits include a slow-paced and heavy riffing style, anthemic choruses, use of both sung and harsh vocals, a reliance on folk instrumentation, and often the use of keyboards for atmospheric effect.
  Viking metal emerged from black metal during the late 1980s and early 1990s, sharing with black metal an opposition to Christianity, but rejecting Satanism and occult themes in favor of the Vikings and paganism. It is similar, in lyrics, sound, and thematic imagery, to pagan metal, but pagan metal has a broader mythological focus and uses folk instrumentation more extensively. Most Viking metal bands originate from the Nordic countries, and nearly all bands claim that their members descend, directly or indirectly, from Vikings.
context_section_description: Amon Amarth and Unleashed's music could be described as death metal, but it incorporates Viking lyrical themes and thus the bands are considered to have broadened the scope of Viking metal. While Norse myths were mostly important for black metal, especially the early 1990s Norwegian scene, as well as for the younger pagan metal genre, bands as the Swedish Unleashed started fitting these myths into death metal even before Amon Amarth appeared. Unleashed set a precedent for many of the coming black metal bands by shying away from the common death metal theme of gore and instead focusing on pre-Christian Swedish heathenism, particularly the Viking Age and old Norse religion. Both Amon Amarth and Unleashed, however, resist the Viking metal label. Johan Hegg of Amon Amarth stated, "It's weird to label a band after the lyrical content because, in that case, Iron Maiden is a Viking metal band, Black Sabbath is a Viking metal band, Led Zeppelin is a Viking metal band." Johnny Hedlund of Unleashed maintains that the band has always played and always will play death metal, commenting, "The Viking lyrics you will find on about three to five songs on every Unleashed album from 1991 and on. I don't think that fact alone re-defines our style in some way."
caption: Johnny Hedlund of Unleashed, performing at Party.San Metal Open Air, 2013
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