Armored Saint today presents their visualizer for “Not On Your Life.” The track comes by way of the band’s critically acclaimed new full-length, Emotion Factory Reset, released earlier this year on Metal Blade Records. The kaleidoscopic clip was created by Costin Chioreanu of Twilight13media.
Comments vocalist John Bush: “The opening lyrics are, ‘You already know my name is John Doe / Yeah you already know but still give it a go.’ I think Phil [Sandoval] had the term, ‘you already know.’ Rhyming, I was, ‘oh, okay, this is cool, like, John Doe.’ There are a couple meanings to it: the cool guy from X is John Doe. It also means that you don’t know who this person is. It led to me thinking in terms of something a little vague, which sometimes I like to do. You already know, yet you don’t know at the same time.
Phil sent me the phrase ‘from dollars to donuts,’ and I got ‘Heavens to Betsy.’ My mom was named Betty, and it’s a little nod to [Bitch vocalist] Betsy Bitch because she’s on Metal Blade. I thought, ‘why not just have a little correlation here.’ It’s a cool, great rock song, and it seems to be some people’s favorite.
The lyrics ‘dollars to donuts’ sounds like something somebody said on the streets of Manhattan in 1950. I also used the phrase ‘lying on the floor in the drunk tank.’ ‘Drunk tank’ is another term people don’t really use in 2026.”
Armored Saint will kick off their North American co-headlining tour with Metal Church this November. The Metal Saint Tour 2026 begins on November 2nd in San Juan Capistrano, California and runs through November 21st in Agoura Hills, California with support provided by LiveKill.
Following the fiery response both bands received during their recent shows together in Europe and fans’ excitement for the upcoming Fall shows, a Spring 2027 leg of this killer metal package has also been announced. The journey will commence on March 19th in Austin, Texas and close on April 10th in Las Vegas, Nevada. Support will be provided by One Machine.
Offers Armored Saint vocalist, John Bush: “Three weeks in the Fall just didn’t seem enough so we decided to do another run of the Metal Saint tour in the Spring of 2027. Celebrating two classic bands from the ‘80s who also have new records out in 2026 is a no-brainer for any metal fan. Plus, there is still a lot of the country to cover. See you at the show!”
Comments Metal Church guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof: “We are stoked to be heading back out on the road with our friends in Armored Saint for another round of the Metal Saint Tour!”
Adds Metal Church drummer Ken Mary: “We are really looking forward to so many fans and friends on tour on this run and we are honored to be with our brothers in metal, Armored Saint !”
For a complete list of dates and to purchase tickets + VIP upgrades, check here.
Emotion Factory Reset, Armored Saint’s ninth studio album, is a resurrection of sorts, a tearing down and a rebuilding in eleven songs of diverse musicality and lyrical themes. Produced, as were the previous four albums, by bassist Joey Vera and mixed by Jay Ruston (Anthrax, Stone Sour), the record finds the quintet challenging themselves. Songs like “Close To The Bone,” “Hit A Moonshot,” and “Every Man-Any Man” have Armored Saint honoring their past as one of the most respected and recognizable bands in heavy music while making forward-thinking music rooted in the present.
Emotion Factory Reset was recorded across several studios including 606 Studios, Secret Hand Studios, Skullseven Studios, Constantine Studios, and Bridge Recording, engineered by OliverRoman, Bill Metoyer, Joey Vera, and Jason Constantine, and features cover art by DDKing.
Fontaines D.C.’s upcoming Dopamine Chamber promises to be one of the biggest rock albums of the fall, and it could be something special. The band has been debuting new songs live lately, and we’ve already heard lead single “Marianne.” The record has the group’s first-ever featured-guest collaborator: Rosalía, who shows up on the as-yet-unheard “Where Is Gone?” Today, Fontaines share the LP’s second single, and it’s a good one.
Tony Iommi has released “Stormwatcher,” the latest single from his upcoming solo album, From the Dark. Built on one of his trademark riffs, the track comes with an animated video of a ship battling a storm, which matches the maritime theme of the lyrics by vocalist Jørn Lande.
Lande says the song draws on something personal. “It channels something from within, something real,” Lande explains.
He says the lyrics follow a story of struggle and sorrow as life sails from birth to death, and beyond. Lande continues, “We are the captain of our own vessel, a ship crashing through unknown and sometimes challenging waters, always navigating forward, steering steady through every storm, driven by dreams of new horizons and longing for something new.”
Lande shares writing credits on every song on the album and appears throughout, alongside bassist Becky Baldwin and drummer Karl Brazil. Iommi co-produced the record with Mike Exeter, his longtime co-writer, producer and audio engineer. The result is a big, clean sound that mixes modern polish with old-school weight.
Iommi is pleased with how it turned out. “It’s an album we’ve really enjoyed making. We’re not trying to prove anything — it’s a great album, it rocks!”
The album opens with “Over the Violent Sun,” which pairs a down-tuned Iommi riff with a dramatic Lande vocal. “Black Times” follows with a quick sucker punch, and then comes the first single, “World Alone.” Fourth track “Beyond the Dead” slows things down with a stately, sinister riff and orchestral touches.
Lande‘s lyrics are steeped in existential questioning, dystopian imagery and the brevity of human life. That runs through the whole record and is especially clear on “Stormwatcher,” which sits at the center of the album. Next up is “Death Wake,” which matches it in scale and drama and paints a bleak picture of life without love and humanity. The closing pair, “Return of the Arbalist” and “Legacy,” bring the passion and the scope. The album arrives a year after Black Sabbath‘s last show, the 2025 “Back to the Beginning” concert in Birmingham, England.
A limited-edition seven-inch of “World Alone,” backed with an exclusive instrumental version and housed in a foiled sleeve, came out Sept. 4. The song is also available in the Gibson learn-to-play-guitar app.
From the Dark will arrive in several deluxe vinyl and CD formats. The double LP will be pressed in four colors, each sold through different retailers, and cut at 45rpm for better dynamic range. The gatefold package is black card with a die cut of Iommi‘s signature cross, and the inner sleeve reveals the full illustration as it slides out. An Amazon-exclusive CD carries the same die-cut sleeve, and a deluxe CD edition comes as a 32-page media book with two bonus tracks.
Lande and Iommi have shared a stage before. In 2010, Lande joined Iommi and fellow Heaven & Hell members Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice at the High Voltage festival at Victoria Park in London for a tribute to the late Ronnie James Dio. Former Deep Purple vocalist and bassist Glenn Hughes also took part.
From the Dark is Iommi‘s third solo album, following 2000’s Iommi and 2005’s Fused. Hughes and drummer Kenny Aronoff, whose credits include the Iommi album and a long run with John Mellencamp, joined him on Fused.
Iommi is widely regarded as one of the most influential guitarists in modern music. As the founding member and primary composer of Black Sabbath, he is credited with helping shape the sound and vocabulary of heavy metal. His honors include multiple Grammy Awards, induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a doctorate from Coventry University, a Lord Mayor’s Award and the Freedom of the City of Birmingham. In June 2026, he was awarded an MBE.
As a young man, Iommi lost the tips of two fingers in an industrial accident, which led him to develop a distinctive playing style and the darker, heavier tone that defined Black Sabbath. The band, formed with Ozzy Osbourne, Butlerand Bill Ward, released pioneering albums throughout the 1970s and became one of Britain’s most influential exports.
Over six decades, Iommi has kept recording, performing and collaborating around the world. He worked extensively with the late Dio, released solo material, and reunited with the original Black Sabbath lineup for the chart-topping 2013 album 13 and the farewell tour “The End” (2016 to 2017), which drew 1.6 million fans.
His recent work has branched into other arenas. In 2023 he collaborated with the Birmingham Royal Ballet on Black Sabbath – The Ballet, a production based on his early compositions. Black Sabbath headlined the 2025 “Back to the Beginning” show in Birmingham, which revisited the band’s origins and served as a farewell to fans just weeks before the death of Osbourne.
🔥 Who Will Rise as This Week’s Champion on the MDR Battle Of The Bands? 🔥 And who will dominate next month as Band of the Month on Metal Devastation Radio?
Last month’s winners, OKL’S FRUITLOOPS, crushed the competition with a staggering 5,083,542 VOTES , claiming the title of Band of the Month on Metal Devastation Radio! You can check them out HERE !
This is the weekly championship edition of the Band Of The Month – Battle Of The Bands that we host every month on MDR!
How does it work? Every Monday, we launch a new poll featuring bands that submit music each week on metaldevastationradio.com. Voting runs until Friday at 9PM EST .
Each Friday night , at the start of The Zach Moonshine Show , I’ll be spinning the Top Six weekly winners , and announcing the #1 band of the week live on air — getting thousands of listens on Mixcloud !
At the end of the month , all weekly votes are added up, and the band with the highest total votes becomes our Band of the Month !
Winning Band of the Month gets:
A featured post on our Facebook page, reaching thousands of fans
A front-page spotlight on metaldevastationradio.com , which pulls in hundreds of thousands of views every month
A free PR email blast from Metal Devastation PR, hitting 40,000+ contacts including labels, zines, stations, and more
Airplay every hour during general rotation
Tons of social media shares and exposure across our network
If you want the world to know who your band is, this is the easiest way to make it happen!
💥 Want in on the next battle? Comment below with your band name and we’ll add you to next week’s poll — or email me at zach@metaldevastationradio.com with “Battle Submission” in the subject line.
Bands can compete as many times as they want , and if you enter multiple weeks in the same month, your votes combine toward the Band of the Month title!
👇 Click on the bands below to vote as many times as you like, or add your own! Poll closes Friday, October 2nd at 9PM EST!
Who Will Rise as This Week’s Champion on the MDR Battle Of The Bands? 09/30/26 – 10/02/26
Vikings and their warrior ethos are a central archetype for metal of all stripes. Hyper-violent warriors from the frozen wastes who descend on coastal towns with great violence and furious anger; what could be more metal than that? Perpetually riding at the front of that particular longship, Amon Amarth have made their share of filthy lucre crafting paeans to the mystical warriors of olde. Since 1994, they’ve spun many yarns of Viking bravery, mythos, and generalized berserker mayhem in ways that have captivated legions of metallers. 2022s The Great Heathen Army was arguably their least interesting outing over a long career, leaving fans hoping for a mighty rebound on The Allfather Awakens. The release of their cowboy-ified video for “Eight Legs of Thunder” didn’t bode well for things to come, but all things unfold as the Allfather directs. What awaits fans of ancient battles and cultures? Will it be Wild West gunplay or the comfortable and familiar haunts of Thor and Loki? Place yer bets!
The Allfather Awakens opens bigly with “Gjallarhorn,” which is considerably more punchy, spry, and memorable than most of the stuff on The Great Heathen Army. You know where it’s going as soon as it starts with the epic chanting and stirring guitar lines, and off to battle you go before you can finish your morning mead. It’s everything Amon Amarth do well, from the aggressive and heroic guitar lines to Johan Hegg’s rough death bellows, and a mighty chorus that makes you want to sack the nearest Dollar General. It’s like something off Twilight of the Thunder God, and it’s 100% fan service. It doesn’t hurt that the music sometimes reminds me of Brainstorm either. Follow-up “Eight Legs of Thunder” works better in the context of the album if you forget the cheeseball video of the band in a Yellowstone-esque cowboy setting. It’s not their best song, but it’s not bad, and the chorus is entertainingly Amarth-y. From there you get a surprisingly good run of classic and near-classic Amon Amarth chestnuts. The chorus of “We Rule the Waves” made me chuckle at first because it’s so fucking on the nose to chant “We are Viking,” but damn if I wasn’t walking around singing it for a week-plus, much to my annoyance.
The single “Upphaf” didn’t win me over when it dropped, as restrained folk-based music isn’t why I come to the Amon Amarth party, but it works well enough as a change-up after several songs loaded with Norse bravado. As The Allfather Awakens unfurls, Amon Amarth trots out the full bag of tricks and tropes they’ve used to make themselves as big as they are. Not a lot here is “new” per se aside from the stripped-down folk of “Upphaf,” but the overall quality of the writing is elevated from last time, thankfully. “Raven God” covers the need for a big, stadium-rocking, ale horn-swinging drinking anthem, as you can’t hear the chorus without wanting a hefty beer to hoist in tribute. The title track is the Viking deadlift day soundtrack to inspire great gains, and closer “Ascending Like an Eagle” almost qualifies as good enough to be included on With Oden on Our Side. There are no tracks that will move to the very front of your Amarth playlist, but none feel overly recycled or forced, and the album ebbs and flows well while providing a consistently urgent, forceful experience. At 46 minutes with most tracks running under the 5-minute mark, Allfather motors along, and no song feels tedious or overlong.
The Amon Amarth formula relies on quality riffs and warrior-approved harmonies, and this time Olavi Mikkonen and Johan Söderberg deliver the goods. There’s plenty of the slightly blackened Viking-core riffs we’ve come to know and love, and the harmonies are righteous and rabble-rousing. The guitar lines and accents provide a big percentage of the thrills here and push the material to the next level. Johan Hegg is reliably stout and powerful as ever, roaring his heart out about axes, oxen, and Wotan. He’s been one of my favorite melodeath croakers since their debut, and he’s aged like fine wine. The Allfather Awakens finds the whole band in good shape, but it’s the much improved songwriting that stands out the most. While the writing on The Great Heathen Army often felt tired and forced, things feel a lot more like the early days here, and there’s less of a sense of the band spinning their tires in the mud.
I approached The Allfather Awakens with trepidation and concern that the Amon Amarth journey may be nearing the jumping-off point. Thankfully, the album title proved prescient, and the Allfather awoke to bring this band of warriors back with renewed bloodlust and rage. They may never achieve the heights of albums like With Oden on Our Side, but if they keep cranking out stuff of this ilk, they will always have Steel on their side. A good album to blast when it’s a good day to die.
(written by Islander) Obviously, we host a lot of premieres here — we’ve done so almost every weekday for many years. The point, of course, is to introduce people to new music they haven’t heard before that we’re inspired to support. But our tradition of premieres holds the same benefit for us — it introduces […]
Scottish post-rock warriors Mogwai have had a hell of a run over the past 30 years or so. Early next year, they’ll release a career-spanning collection under the title Happy Tears. It’s funny to think that Mogwai are the kind of band to put out a greatest-hits album, but it also makes its own kind of sense. That compilation will also include a new track called “Underground.” It’s a collaboration with Iggy Pop, someone who started twisting loud rock ‘n’ roll into strange new shapes decades before Mogwai got started.
Tony Cicoria: The Man Who Was Struck by Lightning and Heard Music
Some stories seem to belong more to Gothic fiction than to documented history. A bolt of lightning strikes an ordinary man. He briefly dies, experiences an out-of-body sensation, survives against overwhelming odds, and weeks later awakens with an irresistible desire to compose music despite having shown almost no interest in it throughout his life.
Yet this is not the plot of a supernatural novel. It is the extraordinary story of Dr. Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon whose encounter with lightning became one of the most intriguing cases ever discussed in neuroscience. His experience fascinated neurologist Oliver Sacks, who devoted an entire chapter of Musicophilia to understanding what happened inside Cicoria’s brain after the accident.
Whether interpreted through science, psychology, or something more mysterious, Cicoria’s transformation continues raising profound questions about creativity, consciousness, and the hidden potential of the human mind.
A Lightning Strike That Changed Everything
On a stormy afternoon in 1994, forty-two-year-old Tony Cicoria attended a family gathering near Albany, New York. Stepping away from the pavilion, he used a public telephone to call his mother. As he finished the conversation and moved away from the phone, lightning struck the telephone line.
The electrical discharge hit Cicoria with enormous force. He later recalled seeing an intense bluish-white light and experiencing the strange sensation of observing his own body lying on the ground from above. His heart stopped, and for a brief period he was clinically dead before an intensive-care nurse, who happened to be waiting to use the telephone, performed CPR and revived him.
He suffered burns where the current entered and exited his body, but his recovery initially appeared surprisingly uneventful. Medical examinations, including neurological testing, found no obvious signs of permanent brain injury. Within weeks, he returned to work as an orthopedic surgeon, believing the most dramatic chapter of his life had already passed.
In reality, the most extraordinary consequences had not yet begun.
When Silence Became Music
Several weeks after the lightning strike, Cicoria noticed something deeply unusual. He developed an overwhelming desire to listen to classical piano music.
This fascination seemed to arrive without warning. As a child he had taken piano lessons for only a short time before abandoning them completely. Throughout adulthood he showed little interest in classical music, preferring other genres and never imagining that music would become central to his life.
The craving quickly intensified. Listening was no longer enough. He felt compelled to buy a piano and teach himself to play, often spending every available hour practicing. More remarkably still, original melodies began appearing in his mind with such persistence that he felt driven to write them down before they disappeared. He later described the experience as if music had suddenly begun flowing through him from an unknown source.
Friends and family witnessed a transformation that seemed impossible to explain. The respected surgeon had become equally obsessed with becoming a pianist and composer.
Oliver Sacks and the Mystery of Sudden Musicophilia
Tony Cicoria’s story eventually attracted the attention of renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose career was devoted to exploring the strange and often beautiful ways the human brain responds to injury and disease.
Sacks included Cicoria’s experience in Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, describing it as one of the most unusual examples of what he called sudden musicophilia—the abrupt emergence of an intense passion for music following a neurological event.
The medical puzzle lay in the apparent contradiction between the clinical findings and Cicoria’s experience. Standard neurological examinations revealed no obvious abnormalities capable of explaining such a dramatic change in personality and creativity. Yet the transformation was undeniable. A man who had shown almost no interest in piano now devoted much of his life to composing and performing original works.
Rather than claiming to have solved the mystery, Sacks presented Cicoria’s case as evidence of how much remains unknown about the relationship between the brain, creativity, and consciousness. Sometimes the most fascinating medical stories are not those that provide answers, but those that expose the limits of current scientific understanding.
“Music, once it came to him, took possession of him.”
Can Lightning Unlock Hidden Creativity?
Tony Cicoria’s experience belongs to a small group of neurological cases that continue challenging scientists. Although lightning injuries are relatively rare, they more commonly leave survivors with memory problems, chronic pain, concentration difficulties, or emotional changes. An overwhelming desire to compose music is almost unheard of.
Some neurologists have suggested that the electrical discharge may have altered neural pathways involved in auditory perception, creativity, or emotional processing. Others have proposed that the near-death experience itself fundamentally changed Cicoria’s outlook, allowing dormant interests to emerge with unusual intensity.
Neither explanation fully accounts for what happened. Developing an appreciation for music is one thing. Suddenly feeling compelled to compose original piano works without extensive musical training is something altogether different.
Cases like Cicoria’s remind researchers that the human brain remains one of science’s greatest mysteries. Creativity is not confined to a single region of the brain but emerges from extraordinarily complex networks that we are only beginning to understand.
Near-Death Experiences and Extraordinary Perception
One of the most discussed aspects of Cicoria’s story is his description of leaving his body immediately after the lightning strike.
He recalled rising above the ground, seeing his own body lying motionless, and becoming aware of the people rushing toward him. Experiences of this kind have been reported by many survivors of cardiac arrest and other life-threatening events, although researchers continue debating how they should be interpreted.
Some neuroscientists argue that such experiences arise from profound changes in brain activity during periods of extreme physiological stress. Others suggest they may reveal aspects of consciousness that remain poorly understood. At present, there is no universally accepted explanation.
For Cicoria himself, the experience carried less importance than what followed. The lightning strike did not simply leave him with an extraordinary memory. It permanently altered the direction of his life.
The Music That Would Not Stop
As the months passed, Cicoria’s fascination with music continued growing. He practiced piano with remarkable dedication while composing pieces that he felt almost compelled to write.
Among his best-known compositions is Lightning Sonata, a work directly inspired by the event that transformed his life. The title reflects not only the physical force that struck him but also the unexpected artistic awakening that followed.
Unlike many hobbyists who discover music later in life, Cicoria described his creative process as unusually vivid. Melodies seemed to arrive fully formed, demanding immediate attention. He often feared they would disappear unless he rushed to the piano or quickly wrote them down.
To outside observers, the transformation appeared almost unbelievable. The disciplined orthopedic surgeon continued practicing medicine while simultaneously developing into a serious pianist and composer, pursuing two careers that had previously seemed entirely unrelated.
Acquired Savant Syndrome or Something Else?
Tony Cicoria’s story is frequently mentioned alongside another rare neurological phenomenon known as acquired savant syndrome. In these unusual cases, individuals develop remarkable artistic, mathematical, or musical abilities after suffering brain injuries or neurological trauma.
Although acquired savant syndrome has been documented in only a small number of people, it raises fascinating questions about whether extraordinary abilities may already exist within the brain, waiting for unusual circumstances to reveal them.
Cicoria himself has never claimed to possess supernatural powers. His story is remarkable precisely because he presents it with the calm perspective of a physician. He acknowledges the mystery while remaining careful not to draw conclusions unsupported by evidence.
That balanced approach has made his experience particularly compelling. Rather than becoming a tale of paranormal certainty, it remains an invitation to explore the extraordinary complexity of the human mind.
Science, Mystery, and the Gothic Imagination
Stories like Tony Cicoria’s occupy a fascinating space between scientific inquiry and Gothic imagination. Unlike fictional tales where lightning grants supernatural powers or resurrects the dead, Cicoria’s experience is fully documented. Yet the transformation that followed remains difficult to explain with complete certainty.
Gothic literature has long explored moments when ordinary life is suddenly interrupted by an event that permanently alters a person’s identity. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein imagined electricity as the force capable of creating life. Edgar Allan Poe examined the hidden chambers of the human mind, suggesting that extraordinary experiences often reveal aspects of ourselves we never knew existed.
Cicoria’s story echoes those literary traditions without requiring anything supernatural. The lightning strike became a catalyst for profound personal change, forcing both scientists and readers to ask whether creativity is something we acquire or something that already exists within us, waiting for the right moment to emerge.
That uncertainty is precisely what makes the story so compelling. It reminds us that reality can sometimes feel as mysterious as fiction.
A Life Forever Divided by Lightning
Tony Cicoria’s story ultimately resists simple explanation. Neurologists continue debating how a lightning strike could coincide with such a profound artistic awakening, while psychologists point to the transformative power of surviving a near-death experience. Neither perspective fully captures the remarkable change that followed one ordinary afternoon in 1994.
What remains beyond dispute is that Cicoria’s life divided into two distinct chapters. Before the lightning strike, he was an accomplished orthopedic surgeon whose interest in music was minimal. Afterward, he became equally devoted to the piano, spending years composing works that seemed to arrive almost unbidden in his imagination.
His experience reminds us that the human brain remains one of science’s greatest mysteries. We understand far more about neurons than we do about creativity, inspiration, or the sudden transformations that occasionally redefine an entire life. Cases like Cicoria’s encourage humility, reminding us that the boundaries of human potential may be far wider than current science can fully explain.
Whether viewed as an extraordinary neurological event, a profound psychological awakening, or simply one of the most remarkable true stories ever documented, Tony Cicoria’s journey continues inviting us to ask one unsettling question: how much of ourselves remains undiscovered until an unexpected moment changes everything?
Explore the Darker Side of the Human Mind
If true stories like Tony Cicoria’s fascinate you, explore the Edgar Allan Poets store. Our designs celebrate Gothic literature, psychological mysteries, Edgar Allan Poe, and the beauty of the unknown.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Tony Cicoria?
Tony Cicoria is an American orthopedic surgeon who survived a lightning strike in 1994 and later developed an extraordinary passion for classical piano and music composition, attracting international attention from neuroscientists.
Did Tony Cicoria really begin composing music after being struck by lightning?
Yes. Following his recovery, Cicoria experienced an intense desire to learn piano and compose original music despite having shown little previous interest in classical composition.
Why did Oliver Sacks write about Tony Cicoria?
Oliver Sacks featured Cicoria’s case in Musicophilia because it represents one of the most unusual documented examples of a dramatic change in musical creativity following a neurological event.
What is acquired savant syndrome?
Acquired savant syndrome is a rare condition in which individuals develop exceptional artistic, musical, or mathematical abilities after brain injury or neurological trauma. Cicoria’s case is often discussed alongside this phenomenon, although it remains unique.
Has science explained Tony Cicoria’s transformation?
No. Researchers have proposed several neurological and psychological explanations, but no single theory fully accounts for the profound musical transformation that followed his lightning strike.
Vikings and their warrior ethos are a central archetype for metal of all stripes. Hyper-violent warriors from the frozen wastes who descend on coastal towns with great violence and furious anger; what could be more metal than that? Perpetually riding at the front of that particular longship, Amon Amarth have made their share of filthy lucre crafting paeans to the mystical warriors of olde. Since 1994, they’ve spun many yarns of Viking bravery, mythos, and generalized berserker mayhem in ways that have captivated legions of metallers. 2022s The Great Heathen Army was arguably their least interesting outing over a long career, leaving fans hoping for a mighty rebound on The Allfather Awakens. The release of their cowboy-ified video for “Eight Legs of Thunder” didn’t bode well for things to come, but all things unfold as the Allfather directs. What awaits fans of ancient battles and cultures? Will it be Wild West gunplay or the comfortable and familiar haunts of Thor and Loki? Place yer bets!
