Oddly enough, this was my first "extreme metal" album, and as such it will always have nostalgic value for me. Looking past the nostalgia, I can clearly see that this is an impressive album. Brutal guitars, drums, and vocals make this an excellent addition to any metalhead's collection. While this isn't Amon Amarth's best, it's a fine album. The riffs in Legend of a Banished Man are just legendary.

The Avenger is probably my favorite Amon Amarth album out of the ones I've listened to so far. It takes the brilliantly sorrowful melodic riffing of Once Sent from the Golden Hall and combines them with an epic song quality. Not to say Once Sent was not a glorious piece of metal, which by all means it was, but The Avenger conjures images of great battles and bravery, especially with its more subtle moments, such as the beginning of "Legend of A Banished Man," or the end of "The Last with Pagan Blood." This is what I hope to get out of a viking-themed album.

This is probabaly one of my favorite melodic death metal albums. I just love the guitar distortion. I don't know any bands that sounds like that, but if you do can you tell me because its great. My favorite song on this album would have to be Bleed for the ancieant gods.

This album kicks a*s its one o the best albums.

Seems to me like this is almost their forgotten album....Quite sad really since it has some of the best Amon Amarth songs in the land....My personal favorite is The Last With Pagan Blood....not only because its an awesome song, but it also has an awesome name....The production is also not quite as clean as their newer releases; which I actually prefer....Don't get me wrong I love their newer albums too....I just like this one a bit more....Definitely recommended if you don't already own it....

Amon Amarth is easily my favorite death metal band. That being said, The Avenger is by far the most mediocre thing to come out of them. Once Sent From The Golden Hall was amazing in my opinion so I was pretty let down by this release. It's essentially more of the same, it's not creative and the band doesn't try to expand on themselves in any way. I personally think it sounds like a bunch of content that wasn't good enough on the last album and was rejected. There's one song I find to be downright terrible and that's "Metalwrath". If you're a fan of the band you can still find some enjoyment on this release, but don't expecting anything other than Once Sent From The Golden Hall: The Outtakes. There is one song I actually thought was really good, and that was "Bleed For Ancient Gods". "Thor Arise" is also good but it doesn't really count because it was already made a long time before this album as part of a demo. The rest is just run of the mill. If you're a fan, you probably already have this, if you aren't then you really don't need to bother.

This CD is SO AMAZING!!!! First time I heard the song Metalwrath it completely blew me away. Don't even think about only buying one song from this... this work of melodic death metal art!!! Save up and buy the whole thing.

The Last With Pagan Blood is one of, if not THE best Amon Amarth songs. Amon Amarth is deffinately up there with Dark Tranquility when it comes to the battle of the two best Melodic Death Metal bands and I have to say I choose Amon Amarth, DT is amazing but Amon Amarth is EPIC.

Amon Amarth have a uniqe sound among Scandanavian Death metalers in that their songs are really catchy and melodically pleasing without sounding pop-y or contrived. This is essential to any metalhead's collection.

'Bleed For Ancient Gods' and 'The Last With Pagan Blood' give you all you need to know about Amon Amarth. Glorious!!