Wrestling star Adam “Edge” Copeland pays tribute to Amon Amarth in band’s new comic book

Adam Copeland in 2024 and Amon Amarth performing live — (Image credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images | Mike Lewis Photography/Redferns)

AEW and former WWE wrestler Adam “Edge” Copeland has penned the foreword of a new Amon Amarth comic book, paying tribute to melodic death metal’s resident Vikings.

The comic, The Great Heathen Army, is available now via Z2. In it, Copeland says the band were a key part of his gym playlist as he worked to return to wrestling during the 2010s, following a medically enforced retirement in 2011.

The wrestler writes: “Amon Amarth were the soundtrack that played in my gym hour after hour, day after day (along with dollops of Metallica and Pantera, bet you’ve never seen those three words together in a sentence), as I trained to get my wrestling career back after being forced to retire for 9 years due to triple fusion in my neck.”

Copeland also describes Amon Amarth’s music as “strong, defiant, teeth-rattling, testosterone-levels-shooting-to-Valhalla metal”. Read the full foreword, and see several panels of The Great Heathen Army, via the Instagram post below.

Though he was forced into retirement on doctors’ orders, Copeland eventually returned to wrestling in 2020. He performed with WWE, with whom he’d been contracted since 1996, from his return up until 2023. He now wrestles for rival promotion AEW.

No stranger to Viking media, Copeland is also an actor who, from 2017 to 2020, played Ketill Flatnose in History Channel TV show Vikings.

The Great Heathen Army takes its name from Amon Amarth’s latest, 12th studio album, which was released in 2022. Metal Hammer’s Rich Hobson gave the album a glowing eight-out-of-10 review.

He wrote: “Stacked against the likes of [previous albums] Berserker or Jomsviking, it’s hard to imagine The Great Heathen Army swelling Amon Amarth’s ranks as much as their more bombastic fare did. But by stripping away the glitz and going right for the throat, Amon Amarth remind us all exactly how they – and the great Viking hordes – terrorised and thrilled Europe in the first place, as an all-conquering force of blood and terror.”

Amon Amarth are currently touring South America and will perform at Knotfest Chile on November 2. See further dates and details via their website.

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Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Metal Hammer and Prog, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, NME and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.