 Amon Amarth and Unleashed sonically play death metal but incorporate Viking lyrical themes and thus are considered to have broadened the scope of Viking metal . Florian Heesch in " Metal for Nordic Men : Amon Amarth 's Representations of Vikings " writes that " While receptions of Norse myths where mostly important in black metal , especially the Norwegian black metal of the early 1990s , and the younger pagan metal , bands as the Swedish Unleashed made the topic fit into death metal before Amon Amarth appeared . " Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind in Lords of Chaos consider Unleashed as setting a precedent for many of the coming black metal bands , as , similar to Bathory 's rejection of common black metal imagery , the band rejected the common death metal themes of gore and , like Bathory , instead focused on pre @-@ Christian Swedish heathenism , particularly the Viking Age and old Norse religion . Both Amon Amarth and Unleashed , however , resist the Viking metal label . Johan Hegg of Amon Amarth stated that " It 's weird to label a band after the lyrical content because , in that case , Iron Maiden is a Viking metal band , Black Sabbath is a Viking metal band , Led Zeppelin is a Viking metal band . " Johnny Hedlund of Unleashed maintains that the band has always played and always will play death metal , commenting that " The Viking lyrics you will find on about three to five songs on every Unleashed album from 1991 and on . I don 't think that fact alone re @-@ defines our style in some way . " 
