Swedish warriors have returned with a new album and soon they will return to Greek territories. A few days before this arrival, Ted Lundstrom (bass guitar) tried to enlighten us in a few things.

Solid Rock: Can you tell us a little bit about the preparation for “Twilight of the Thunder God”? Do you have certain formulas for composing and recording your albums?

Ted Lundström: The formula we use and used for our last album too is to spend a lot of time in the rehearsal-room together. We try to do it like a nine to five job but more relaxed. It is mainly Olavi and Johan Söderberg who come up with the riffs and then we try to arrange the songs in the rehearsal. Another thing is to work as a team in the studio.

Solid Rock: How did “With Oden On Our Side” fair sales-wise and what are your expectations for the new album?

Ted Lundström: The Oden album really gave us a big boost in many countries we usually had weaker sales and we also grew a lot in our strong markets, and we expect that the new album will do even better than the last ones. The chart entries from the first couple of weeks over Europe and US shows that we’re doing really good.

Solid Rock: Jens Bogren is once again in the producer’s chair. How does the new album sound to you?

Ted Lundström: I think we managed to take our sound and style one step further and we felt more comfortable this time in the studio. The guest appearances was another thing that was very fun to record and the final result was amazing. I guess Jens new us a little better this time and dared to push us a bit more in the studio to get the perfect result.

Solid Rock: Do you believe that Amon Amarth have somehow evolved their style with this release? The album sounds somehow more aggressive to my ears at least, with regards to your 2 previous recordings.

Ted Lundström: You always evolve as a band the longer you play together and the more you play, maybe we had more aggressions in us writing this album but at the same time we did one of our most epic songs in our career in “Embrace Of The Endless Ocean”.

Solid Rock: The lyrical issues the band deals with remain the same. How much time do you personally invest into Scandinavian mythology (do you read, do you collect artifacts, etc.)?

Ted Lundström: Johan H reads a lot of books and stuff about Scandnavian history and Mythology. It’s a big interest of mine to but not as much as Johan. We all try to get hold of cool stuff that is Viking oriented, like Jewels, rings pendants, Swords for example.

Solid Rock: On “Twilight…” you have a lot of very special guests: L.G. Petrov (Entombed), Roope Latvala (Children Of Bodom), Apocalyptica. How did these collaborations result, are they because of personal acquaintances or did you think that the particular persons could help?

Ted Lundström: LG petrov is an old friend from Stockholm and we’re all fans of his vocal duties in Entombed so he felt like the perfect choice for Guardians. Roope Latvala is a friend since we have toured with Children of bodom a couple of times in our career. We knew he likes our music a little bit and we wanted to have a little more technical solo than we usually create.

When it comes to Apocalyptica  we just needed some chello parts to make the song cooler and we decided to ask them if they where interested in helping out.

Solid Rock: How difficult is it to select the songs for your setlist and how far back in your career do you go?

Ted Lundström: It gets harder and harder for every album you release since you have more songs to choose from. Also the audience have more different requests which we try to fulfill. We play older songs now and then so the setlist will be different from tour to tour but the fact is that our last three or four albums are way more popular so we focus on them.

Solid Rock: Your relationship with Metal Blade has been going for roughly one decade now. How happy are they with the band and how happy are the band with them?

Ted Lundström: I think we have a pretty good relationship with the label and I think there are bands that are more difficult to work with than us so they should be happy with us too. Of course there is nothing like a “perfect” label.

Solid Rock: In the past year the band toured with Slayer on the Unholy Alliance tour. Can you give us a few reasons for participating in this tour, and tell us a bit about the response of the audience to Amon Amarth and the situation that Slayer are in?

Ted Lundström: Our participation in Unholy alliance was because it’s a big tour that made us play for a lot of new fans that might not have heard us before. We are also big fans of Slayer since their earlier days so it was coo to be able to tour with them finally. I think the response we had on the tour was graet every night. The audience was mainly a “Slayer” audience but we felt that our music appealed to them.

Solid Rock: Thank you very much for your time. Would you like to close with a message to the Greek fans of Amon Amarth in light of your highly expected appearance in Athens on St Valentine’s Day!

Ted Lundström: We’re really looking forward to the shows, especially since our last shows in Greece was amazing. See you all there, and stay metal. Cheers.