YMMV / Amon Amarth

• Awesome Music: To some fans, all of their work. To others, just some albums. Probably Versus the World, or With Oden On Our Side or Twilight of the Thunder God. Really, their epic-norse-gods-axe-and-hammering-each-other-warfare-and-glory melodic death metal thing can be quite compelling.
• Complete Monster: "Where Silent Gods Stand Guard": The Viking is a cannibalistic, undead Blood Knight who opens the song by beheading 10 men, relishing in their pleas for mercy. Devouring their eyes and drinking their blood to make them his slaves while additionally barring them from the afterlife, the Viking mounts their skulls on his shrine as "macabre trophies", of which he has at least a thousand.
• Contested Sequel: Compared to the Concept Album Jomsviking, Amon Amarth played it straight with Berserker as they took the formula they had established with Twilight of the Thunder God and stuck to their guns. For example, on The Metal Archives, it's Amon Amarth's lowest rated album on the site. That says something.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Their first album is much rougher and more unpolished than they would eventually end up sounding.
• Narm: The other possible chance. Some people just find them over-the-top or over-confident melodeath, either their lyrics or the music itself, specially if they're fans of not-melodeath death metal. Not to mention the toy lines.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: This was the main complaint about Berserker. Many fans saw the songs as rehashings of older material.
• Signature Song: would probably be "The Pursuit Of Vikings", "Death In Fire" or "Twilight Of The Thunder God".
• Tear Jerker:
  • To some fans, "The Fate of Norns" (song). "Fate of Norns" tells of a Norse warrior who is laying to rest his six-year-old son, calling out to the gods and the Norns and stricken with grief demanding to know why they took his child from him. In the end, he chooses to lie on the funeral pyre with his son.
  • "Embrace of the Endless Ocean" is about a man who, after years of slavery, finally regains his freedom and is able to return to his homeland and family, but a storm shatters his hopes by sinking his ship. In the final verse, the man has his last thoughts as he sinks into the abyss.
    Won't feel the breeze of my home shore
    Nor see the lakes and winter snow
    My hopeful dreams lie ripped and torn
    Father, I die alone
  • In "Runes for my memory", a group of Vikings raids the land of the Rus. One of them is mortally wounded in an attack, and they have no choice but to bury him there with a rune-carved stone to commemorate him. The wounded Viking reflects on this, his home and his loved ones.
    Here I lie,
    On wet sand,
    I will not make it home.
    I clench my sword,
    In my hand;
    Say farewell to those I love.
  • "Back on Northern Shores", the closing track of their Concept Album "Jomsviking", is the sad conclusion of a tearful story. After going through many tribulations, a young-boy-turned-jomsviking comes back home to enact his vengeance. He blames his former village for destroying his life, for making him an outlaw after killing a man and for making the girl he loves forget him. His forces come close to his goal, but fate catches up with him first when he ends up dead at the hands of none other than his own father.
• Tough Act to Follow: Twilight of the Thunder God is one of Amon Amarth's best albums. Unfortunately, everything after that failed to live up to the expectations of said album.