“We always want to write the best album we ever did,” Amon Amarth leader Johan Hegg tells Apple Music. And while that might seem like an answer that any artist might give in talking about their latest work, Hegg goes on to say that his massively popular Swedish death-metal squad had an additional goal for their previous album, 2022’s The Great Heathen Army, that may have hamstrung them a bit. “We had this idea that we wanted to write a really heavy album, and the problem with that mindset is that the creative ideas that you get may not be suited for heavy songs. This time around we said, ‘Let’s go with the inspiration we have and try to make each song as good as it can possibly be.’” From there, it was just a short leap to “Upphaf,” Amon Amarth’s first-ever acoustic song. As it turns out, it’s an idea that guitarist Olavi Mikkonen has had for over a decade. “Normally if he has an idea he doesn’t believe in, he won’t even present it to us,” Hegg says. “But this one kept coming back to him, and finally he felt like it was the time to introduce it to us. We loved it—great song, great melodies—and we knew we could do something with it. It felt really good to take a chance.” For the lyrics, Hegg wanted to recount the story of the beginning of the world that appears in Norse mythology. (“Upphaf” means “origin” or “genesis” in Swedish.) He ended up using an English translation of the first five stanzas of the Völuspá, the Old Norse poem that imagines the Earth’s genesis. “I started out just using it as a guideline to find the vocal melody,” he explains. “But it was like slipping a hand into a perfect-fitting glove. It just felt like the song was written for those words.” Death metal purists fear not: Brief acoustic detour aside, The Allfather Awakens is crammed with all the chalice-hoisting festival anthems Amon Amarth fans could hope for. Basking in the band’s traditional themes of Viking lore, Old Norse legends, and heroic battlefield exploits, “Gjallarhorn,” “We Rule the Waves,” and “Die with a War Cry” ride meaty riffs into a headbanging, mead-swilling Valhalla. As with all of Amon Amarth’s albums, the Norse god Oden, giver and seeker of wisdom, takes center stage on “Raven God,” ”Oden’s Hunt,” and “The Allfather Awakes,” while “Eight Legs of Thunder” is a rousing tribute to his horse, Sleipner. A lifelong student of the Viking Age and Norse mythology—he even has a podcast called Exploring the Viking Age in which he interviews academic experts on the subject—Hegg says Oden is more relevant than ever. “On a lot of these songs, I’m using the idea of waking Oden as a metaphor for rekindling our quest for wisdom,” he says. “We need to get back to following knowledge rather than opinions.”