Destroyer of Worlds is the tenth studio album by Swedish extreme metal band Bathory. It was released on 9 October 2001, through Black Mark Production. The album's title is taken from a famous quote by J. Robert Oppenheimer about the atomic bomb: "I am become death, destroyer of worlds", which was itself quoted from verse 32 of chapter 11 in the Bhagavad Gita, spoken by Vishnu. Stylistically, Destroyer of Worlds is a cross between the Viking metal of Bathory's 1988–1991 period and the thrash metal style of Requiem and Octagon. It is Bathory's longest studio album.
After forging the templates of black metal and viking metal in the ’80s and early ’90s, this Swedish institution went on to deliver grit-caked, one-man-band, thrash-metal brutality on 2001’s <i>Destroyer of Worlds</i>. Quorthon opens with Viking-esque acoustic guitar in “Lake of Fire”, then sings his voice raw on the title track over battering-ram drums and a chorus of devil moans. “Kill Kill Kill” features supercharged riffs caked in motorcycle exhaust, while “White Bones” traverses shiny guitar harmonics and face-mauling distortion.