Horns up, oars to the beer-soaked floor. Heavy Metal’s greatest Viking warriors, Amon Amarth, are taking over London again. Thank Odin.
Amon Amarth – Orbit Culture – Soilwork
Eventim Apollo, London – 10 October 2026
Words: Lucy Dunnet
Photography: Dominic Beaven
Soilwork
“What a fucking lineup! It’s good to be back,” shouts vocalist Björn ‘Speed’ Strid, as we ride into tonight’s Swedish universe.
It is a testament to the greatness of Sweden’s Metal exports that just two years after Soilwork last graced London’s soil opening for In Flames and Arch Enemy – at this very same venue, no less – they are back again, leading the charge of another strictly Swedish Melodeath bill with Orbit Culture and Amon Amarth.
Tonight may feature more horns, hammers, and armour-clad miscreants battling on stage, but the smorgasbord of Swedish Metal is just as delicious.
Thirty years of Soilwork may not have been long enough to see them take their own headline tours to venues the size of tonight’s Eventim Apollo, but that does not diminish their staple position in Sweden’s Melodic Death Metal scene.
It is just hard to argue with the power of the Vikings, isn’t it? Speed moves about the stage with the flamboyant arms of a ringmaster, the chill of a surfer, and the sky-scraping vocals of a Metal-screaming siren.
Under his watchful eye, a pit opens for the punching grooves of Figure #5, before the hook-heavy Distortion Sleep takes over, ever a fan favourite.
Blast beats and epic melodies rip through the venue in Death Diviner, before it’s time for Stålfågel to bring the first course of tonight’s feast to a close.
Like lullabies layered into huge skull-knocking anthems, Soilwork are extraordinarily easy to listen to and put on a rapturous live show.
Orbit Culture
Out of the soil and into orbit, the stage becomes an industrial chamber of strobe attacks and pummelling synths as the youngest band of tonight’s bill, Orbit Culture, get started.
Anyone who is not immediately sucked into the whirling pit works hard to keep their organs inside their chest, so visceral is the Swedes’ wall of chug straight off the bat.
From the depths of the eye-squinting darkness onstage comes an onslaught of sinewy groove-laden riffs, crackling roars and anarchic rhythms that it should be illegal not to headbang to.
When the lighting guy allows it, lead guitarist Richard Hansson and vocalist/rhythm guitarist Niklas Karlsson can be seen windmilling like maniacs, and when the lighting guy does not allow it, Orbit Culture infuses all your remaining senses with an enticing modern Metal bite.
When Niklas tells the crowd to jump for The Tales Of War, it is a wonder no one ended up hitting the 35-foot-high ceiling. His bluesy clean rasps in Strangler immediately call to mind the comparisons to Metallica’s James Hetfield, and all the swagger that comes with it.
But then it is time to see how big of a circle pit the Eventim Apollo can churn up for While We Serve. “Are you ready to go apeshit banana?”
Did the Orbit Culture frontman really just say that? This is not a song that needs any help building tension, with its fade-in loop intro that boomerangs around the room before the neck-snapping riffs assassinate with relentless force.
But the challenge of a giant circle pit is never to be passed over by hammer-wielding Metalheads, so apeshit banana they do indeed go.
Every time Orbit Culture do something, be it release a new album, dominate the world on tour, or even just talk about dominating the world on tour, you are always left wondering just how big this Swedish Melodeath quartet is going to get.
Amon Amarth
“London, you are Vikings,” Amon Amarth frontman and Norse mythology expert Johan Hegg bellows out more than once. For tonight, everyone is a Viking. And with the way they have transformed the stage and the sheer world-altering power of Amon Amarth’s storytelling, it is impossible not to believe him.
Especially since every time the frontman opens his mouth, the sonority of a Viking god incarnate booms out.
The all-new theatrical stage production that was promised for The Allfather Awakens tour leaves more than a few jaws on the floor. There are towering pillars and mystical archways emblazoned with runes.
A giant billowing sea monster puppet, which Johan battles with his hammer. Demon-eyed guardians of Asgard statues that almost get defeated by a curtain. Two dragon figureheads that flank Jocke Wallgren’s drum kit, and a backdrop that displays a different mesmerising visual as every epic battle (song) takes place.
The other thing that was promised was an extended headline set, so imagine how many battles, feasts, quests, and rows across the “sea” that entails.
Spoiler alert: still not enough to make you want to do anything other than turn around and see it all over again once the night is over.
As Sweden’s Melodeath legends storm through their armoury of crowd-stirring, thunder-conjuring anthems, each song and onstage snuffing of the Deceiver Of The Gods takes the London crowd one step closer to wondering if they’re even still in London at all. “Welcome to Valhalla,” Johan roars.
Drenched in the aurora borealis (seriously, give this lighting tech a raise) and videos that alternate between a raging sea and crowd close-ups, Put Your Back Into The Oar whips up its usual magic of turning hundreds of adults into kids playing make-believe as they take their places on the beer-soaked floor to enact rowing in a Viking longboat.
Even the balcony chairs can be seen swaying in time with the booming chants of “ROW!”
But possibly one of the most surreal moments comes during Amon Amarth’s first-ever acoustic track, Upphaf, from their new album, which sees the Vikings trade their axes for acoustic guitars and, in Johan’s case, a baseball cap.
They sit around a firepit on tree stumps and transfix the Eventim Apollo with a different kind of Norse epic, one of mythically-laced harmonies and a stripped-back melody made for post-battle melancholic reflections around a longhouse hearth.
After thanking the crowd for sharing this Viking feast with them, the five legends raise their horns and down them, a drinking battle that Johan loses. Perhaps that is why he has been battling so many trickster gods and armour-clad mascots onstage.
Before they can bring the night to a begrudging close, there is time for one final guest, Saxon’s Biff Byford, whose face appears blown up on the screen to take part in the medieval warrior sing-off, Saxons and Vikings.
The Amon Amarth commanders and their army of eager fans are as mighty as ever, with another monumental night of Heavy Metal wickedly etched into the history books.
