Three years have passed since Amon Amarth delivered their first concept album, Jomsviking. The Swedish Viking battalion has returned with their 11th album, Berserker, and have debuted the thundering first single, "Raven's Flight," which you can hear above.

"The previous album was a concept album but we didn’t want to get into a situation where every album has to be a concept record, so this is different,” states frontman Johan Hegg. “We wanted to step away from that and look at being a little bit more diverse, with the lyrics and everything else. I got ideas from lots of different things, from history stuff and mythological sources. Sometimes you just get something in your head and there doesn’t have to be a bigger meaning behind it – sometimes it’s just a great metal lyric that fits with a great metal song. And these are fucking great metal songs!"

“For me, this is Amon Amarth 2.0," Hegg continued. "I think what we’ve done here is give ourselves the space to explore other parts of our musicality and who we are as a band. If you’re content with where you’re at, what’s the point of continuing? We always want to come up with new ideas and find new ways of doing things and to create bigger and better shows and really try to improve every aspect of what the band is. We want to try to keep growing and to do this for as long as we have the possibility to do so, because this is the best fucking job in the world.”

Berserker was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Jay Ruston (Anthrax, Stone Sour, Steel Panther) and is set for a May 3 release through Metal Blade. See the artwork and track listing below and pre-order your copy here.

Amon Amarth, Berserker Artwork + Track Listing

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01. "Fafner's Gold"
02. "Crack the Sky"
03. "Mjölner, Hammer of Thor"
04. "Shield Wall"
05. "Valkyria"
06. "Raven's Flight"
07. "Ironside"
08. "The Berserker at Stamford Bridge"
09. "When Once Again We Can Set Our Sails"
10. "Skoll and Hati"
11. "Wings of Eagles"
12. "Into the Dark"

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