Viking Metal on vo.rs

Midgardsblot: Metal Among the Burial Mounds

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Most festivals with a Viking theme are working with polystyrene longships and a rented smoke machine. Midgardsblot has the actual graves. It stages Viking and atmospheric metal at Borre in Vestfold, on the largest concentration of monumental burial mounds in northern Europe, ground where real Iron Age chieftains were actually buried more than a thousand years ago. The setting is the entire point, and it is not a set dressing anyone could fake.

Amon Amarth: Viking Metal as a Stadium Sport

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 09:00:00 +0000

At some point in the last decade a Swedish death metal band from a Stockholm commuter suburb started arriving on stage inside a giant Viking helmet, flanked by inflatable warriors and a longship, and the crowd started rowing. Actual rowing. Thousands of people sitting on the floor of a festival field, pulling imaginary oars in time. That is Amon Amarth in 2023, and getting there took thirty years of very committed hard work.