Author: Rok Klemše
Artist: At The Gates
Label: Century Media
Release: year_month
Runtime: 44:16
Rating: 5/5
It’s not easy being a legendary band that shaped an entire genre and then rises from the dead after years, even decades, of silence. Fans will always judge a band like that purely by the cult status it earned with this or that record, and they’ll expect the impossible, while the band can easily come off as a nostalgic stroll down memory lane, stuck in a vicious circle of replaying »best-of« hits. To really come back to life, it ultimately has to prove its new existence with new material. Sooner or later that happens, no matter how fiercely bands insist at first that there won’t be a new record. In recent years Forbidden got off their asses, then Carcass, and even Faith No More are announcing a new album. The pioneers of the Gothenburg sound, At the Gates, also swore there would be no new album, yet here we are: the first release since their cult classic Slaughter of the Soul (1995), their comeback At War With Reality, is right around the corner. After nineteen years of studio silence, does the band still have anything to say? Can a band like this still be relevant? Last year Carcass proved with Surgical Steel that it’s absolutely possible. But what about At the Gates?
At War With Reality greets you with an ominous quote from Sobre Heroes y Tumbas (On Heroes and Tombs) by the Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato, recited in Spanish by Anton Reisenegger (Lindberg’s bandmate in Lock Up and guitarist of Chile’s Criminal):
First: God does not exist.
Second: God exists and is a scoundrel.
Third: God exists, but he sometimes sleeps: his nightmares are our existence.
Fourth: God exists, but he has access to madness, and that madness is our existence.
Fifth: God is not omnipresent, he cannot be everywhere. Sometimes he is absent, in other worlds, in other things.
Sixth: God is a poor devil with problems he cannot solve with his power. He fights matter the way an artist fights his work. Sometimes he becomes Goya, but mostly he’s a catastrophe.
Seventh: Before the beginning of history, God was defeated by the prince of darkness and turned into a supposed devil, thereby discrediting him twice over, since God was supposedly the creator of this horrible creation.
Once the intro is over and the first track, Death And the Labyrinth, kicks in, it’s crystal clear. At the Gates are not a »nostalgia act«. After almost twenty years of studio silence, they use At War With Reality to justify their cult status and only confirm and cement it. The answers to the questions we’ve been asking since the album was announced – Will it even be any good? Can At the Gates live up to the gigantic expectations? Will we get Slaughter of the Soul 2? – answer themselves. At War With Reality is outstanding, At the Gates didn’t buckle under the pressure, and the new album is far from just SOTS 2. Stylistically it’s of course a sort of logical evolutionary continuation from the point where At the Gates’ history first stopped, and the easiest comparisons would indeed be Slaughter of the Soul and Terminal Spirit Disease, but AWWR is much more than that. It’s an album that isn’t ashamed of the legacy it was built on, and in fact picks up the story right where it ended, yet it hides countless nuances reaching all the way back to With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness, and at the same time presents At the Gates in a new, reborn and, if you will, modern light.
The sound of the album is downright staggering. Fredrik Nordström’s production is a living beast that bellows out the definition of the Gothenburg sound at the top of its lungs: fantastic dynamics, a rolling, thundering rhythm section and riffs sharp as a scalpel. The Gothenburg pioneers show everyone who’s been trying to sound like SOTS for twenty years, like a father showing his son, exactly where they’re going wrong. The Björler/Larsson guitar duo throws sparks for all forty-five minutes, their riffs are mighty and varied, and it even seems that toward the end the album doesn’t fade but hits the gas with even more ease. Then again, AWWR isn’t really that fast a record, since the guys mostly stomp around in a dark mid-tempo that’s full of crawling, creepy and mighty melody. The main culprits are the psychotic riffing and the slower but all the more melodic solo parts, thought through to the bone and placed exactly where they belong. The deep, intricate and gloomy atmosphere, carried by the terrifying riffs, is most reminiscent of With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness, but with the crushing production it sounds far more convincing and intense. Besides the chopping and rattling of guitar strings, the main reason for that is the utterly convincing Lindberg, who still has one of the fiercest and most charismatic voices in death metal. His venomous spewing, hand in hand with the blazing riffing, is still one of the most unique pairings in death metal, this time even more so thanks to the maturity and clarity of Tompa’s vocals, which brilliantly bring in his best lyrics to date. They’re poetic and full of symbolism inspired by the literary genre of magical realism, which underpins the whole concept of the album.
Is AWWR better than SOTS? I think that’s the wrong question. At the Gates aren’t inventing anything new. They don’t even need to, since they already invented melodic death metal, and At War With Reality is a proper masterclass in how it should sound. At the Gates show everyone who’s been trying to copy SOTS for twenty years how it’s done. With At War With Reality, At the Gates haven’t tarnished their legendary, immortal legacy, they’ve built on it. The new album works like a ritual that summons the old-school spirit of Gothenburg death metal back among the living, but with a new heart that beats with flawless sound and a master’s talent for songwriting. With At War With Reality we got exactly what we secretly hoped for but were really afraid we wouldn’t get. One of the strongest contenders for album of the year, with endless replay value! Welcome back, At the Gates!
As part of the European tour presenting At War With Reality, At the Gates will stop closest to us on December 14, 2014 at the Arena in Vienna!
Lineup
Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg – vocals
Anders Björler – guitar
Jonas Björler – bass
Martin Larsson – guitar
Adrian Erlandsson
Production
Fredrik Nordström
Tracklist
1. El Altar Del Dios Desconocido
2. Death And the Labyrinth
3. At War With Reality
4. The Circular Ruins
5. Heroes And Tombs
6. The Conspiracy of the Blind
7. Order From Chaos
8. The Book of Sand (The Abomination)
9. The Head of the Hydra
10. City of Mirrors
11. Eater of Gods
12. Upon Pillars of Dust
13. The Night Eternal
