EspyRock’s Abhijeet Ahluwalia recently conducted an interview with AMON AMARTH guitarist Olavi Mikkonen. In the interview Mikkonen talks about how the band almost split up and more. Read an excerpt from the interview below:

Abhijeet Ahluwalia: There must have been tensions at some point though. Did you ever think of packing it all in?

Olavi Mikkonen: “Definitely. Before we recorded Versus The World we were very tired and nothing was really happening and we said 'this will be our last album.' Then we started getting recognition and suddenly it was like a whole new world opened up for us. At that point we made a pact that we will do Amon Amarth 100%. After that, we’ve found a lot of success.”

Abhijeet Ahluwalia: What went wrong at that point? Why were you so tired?

Olavi Mikkonen: “We did lots of touring, but back then we had to get off the road and go straight into our jobs and rehearse in the evenings. Then we went to the US and the whole tour was really bad, we got ripped off and the following European tour was terrible as well so we thought it wasn’t worth it anymore. You can’t have things like a family if you don’t have any income and stuff like that. But then we made the pact and never looked back.”

Abhijeet Ahluwalia: : What has changed for the band since then? To what do you attribute the recent success?

Olavi Mikkonen: “After Fate Of Norns we started to use Jens Bogren as a producer and he has really helped us arrange the songs and take out unnecessary parts and things like that. So it’s probably a combination of writing songs for many years, and getting new input from a new guy who really taught us to make songs more compact. That’s something we learnt from him. And it helps that we’ve now had Amon Amarth as our main job for about five years so there is so much more time to play guitar. I have never played as much guitar as I have in the last few years, so of course you get better.”

Read the entire interview here.

Amon Amarth’s latest album Surtur Rising was released in North America on March 29th via Metal Blade Records.

Surtur Rising tracklisting is as follows:

'War Of The Gods'

'Töck's Taunt - Loke's Treachery Part II'

'Destroyer Of The Universe'

'Slaves Of Fear'

'Live Without Regrets'

'The Last Stand Of Frej'

'For Victory Or Death'

'Wrath Of The Norsemen'

'A Beast Am I'

'Doom Over Dead Man'

Bonus Tracks:

'War Machine' (KISS cover)

'Balls To The Wall' (ACCEPT cover)

'Aerials' (SYSTEM OF A DOWN cover)