Tear Jerker / Bathory

• Much of Hammerheart is quite emotional, especially given Quorthon's impassioned, howling style of melodic vocals.
  • Song to Hall Up High is a calm, prayer-like song that almost feels as if it came out of desperation. The solemn, slow instrumental complements the vocals that can resemble a priest. Even more gut-wrenching was Jennie Tebler's cover, which closed out In Memory of Quorthon.
  • The last two tracks; "Home of Once Brave" and "One Rode to Asa Bay" both deal with the systematic destruction of the old Scandinavian culture and people in a particularly moving way.
  • 'One Rode to Asa Bay' especially, describing the gradual erasure of the Norse peoples' old pagan beliefs and unique culture through the fall of the titular village. There's no vengeful bitterness towards Christianity that could've easily suffused the song, only a mournful lament of a people and their culture being wiped away. The melancholic but sanguine ending of the old man, still holding fast to the old ways, looking out across the waves and to the sun in the sky as he calls out to Odin one last time is hauntingly powerful, especially concluded by Quorthon's "People of Asa Bay, It's only just begun!".
• Twilight of the Gods also has some examples. The titular intro track, for example, has a pessimistic look into our modern world, with corruption, lies, and a general state of poor spirit.
  • Blood and Iron is initially about creation, but then shifts to the battle of Ragnarok, in which the fate of the Gods can seem tragic.
  • The ending track, Hammerheart, reads almost as if it were a man on his deathbed. Not only that, but the instrumental is much more epic, being an orchestral rendition of Jupiter by Gustav Holst. In fact, Quorthon intended for this to be Twilight of the Gods to be the final album of Bathory, so this reads as a goodbye that came to the fans. Though he did return, the song can still be connected by a listener's mind to Quorthon's death.
• "Ring of Gold" from Nordland I. It's probably the softest song Quorthon ever recorded and certainly features his most melancholy vocal performance.
  • Additionally, the inclusion of "The Winds of Mayhem", the recurring outro track of the first five albums, at the end of Nordland II. Given that it would be Quorthon's final album before his unfortunate passing, the unintentional bookending of Bathory as a whole makes it all the more sad.