Amon Amarth - With Oden On Our Side

About a fortnight ago, Ned and I took the Rolls-Royce out for a simply delightful spin across the countryside near the manse on the Riviera. You know how Old Ned likes his drives! We bantered on breezily, as Ned and I do when the driving mood strikes us, mulling over the art and literature of the age, chatting about esprit de corps, jovially pursuing nothing in particular as the fields of Cap Ferrat blurred sentimentally past.

Now, as we drove and idled and picked apart Flaubert, Old Ned couldn't help but notice the simply stifling rural silence encroaching upon us as the conversation(s) du jour grew stale. Miles away we were, simply miles from the manse, with not a conversational foothold to be found!

But Ned is of course the kind of ever-so-prepared chap I simply die to associate with. With a simply startling "fiddle-de-dee!", he burst out a disc of music he'd purchased recently, a collection of ditties he referred to as Viking black metal.

What the hell? Who MAKES this stuff? That's actually all it is: Viking black metal. Nordic hard rock. Whatever. It's the worst! Not since Lordi have I been so delightfully disgusted!

Now, these guys are a little vanilla when put up against Lordi who do, in fact, oooooze menace and authenticity. One "John Hegg" of "Amon Amarth" can roar and wail all he wants about "VALHALLAAAAAAA", but whereas Mr. Lordi is HARDCORE (and married!), I'm pretty sure John Hegg is just a regular old guy turning his personal experiences into music. Just like Dave Matthews really did "do it", these guys really DID ravage your village and rape your sister!

DON'T EVER LISTEN TO THIS ALBUM!

Note: My hard drive fizzled out. I made my daddy take the computer to an expert and there's nothing for it, I lost everything - EVERYTHING! That music library took years to compile! I actually assigned album artists, and album art, composers and genres to all of it! Made sure there were no "Iron and Wine"s among the "Iron & Wine"s! AND IT'S ALL GONE NOW! I'll probably never find those Hilary Duff concert bootlegs again. So I suppose I'm starting again from scratch, and memory. I cried. ON TOP OF THAT, I watched the first half of Memento yesterday and am actually DYING to watch the rest of it, but can't yet, AND Eurovision is beginning! Point is I'm going a little nuts! More than a little, and I just couldn't help myself!!! Members of upper-class British society listening to Nordic death metal, not funny? Probably! BUT COME ON THESE GUYS HAVE LIKE 23948 ALBUMS AND THEY SERIOUSLY THINK THEY ARE VIKINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!