Sat in a dark, secluded tour bus, Johan Söderberg, guitarist with Viking metallers Amon Amarth, gives us an insight into all thing Amon Amarth. The low down on the last album, “With Odin On Our Side”, as well as telling us about touring with the mighty Dimmu Borgir! 

Johan Söderberg

“I have not read one bad review of our new album!” Johan says confidently, “I think everybody likes it, we intentionally made it heavier than ‘Fate Of Norns’, by going to a new studio. We thought we couldn’t take it [the heaviness] any further in the old studio.”

“So how have you found touring with Dimmu Borgir so far?” We ask. “The first week of the Dimmu [Borgir] tour has been excellent”, he says, his strong Swedish accent coming through, “It has been sold out every night!”. “When we started this band, fifteen years ago, we never thought we would still be around today, you know.” he adds.

With Amon Amarth being long standing members of the Swedish scene, we put this to Johan, “You guys were around way before Myspace, but do you think that Myspace has made it a lot easier for bands to get signed by record labels?” “I don’t think so”, he replies, “I think there are too many bands on Myspace and I don’t think that’s the way to get signed. It’s just luck really”.

Amon Amarth

To wrap things up we asked Johan the obvious question, “What are the plans for the rest of this year and into 2008?” it looks like the band are going to be kept really busy over the coming months as Johan lets us in on future plans, “After this whole European tour, we have two weeks off, then we go to America to do our first real headline tour over there. After that we will start writing the new album.”

“We can we expect from that new album, Will there be any changes in the sound?” Obviously we were trying to get a sneak peek at some future ideas, but Johan wasn't giving anything away as he coyly replied, “Not really, we are going to do what we have always done and try to create even better songs than the last album,” adding “Though we won’t do any cover versions, I prefer our own material instead of doing covers”.

Alas, we didn’t get a secret scoop on the album, but their latest album “With Odin On Our Side” should tide us over until the next album is released!

With Odin On Our Side is out now via Metal Blade and you can check out the HRH view via this link. To find out more about the band then you can check out their official website at www.amonamarth.com