I thought our man BadWolf got some interesting insights about the new At the Gates album in his recent interview with Tompa Lindberg, but just now we got a bit of aural insight into At War With Reality: Century Media has posted a teaser on YouTube that contains a (painfully brief) slice of the music.
Of course, it’s not enough of a slice on which to begin opining about the album as a whole — but as slices go, it sounds tasty to me. Listen next: Continue reading »
(In this post we present BadWolf’s interview with Tomas Lindberg of Lock Up, Disfear, and of course At the Gates, whose comeback album At War With Reality is headed our way in October)
“We still have a sense of urgency.”
That’s what Thomas “Tompa” Lindberg, vocalist of Swedish death metal legends At The Gates told me in between vocal takes as he called No Clean Singing from the studio. Now that At The Gates have finally released the cover art for their upcoming album At War With Reality, their first in 19 years, Lindberg is ready to talk—about finding his screaming voice, his political views, and the magical realist literature that has informed his new work.
So, you’re in the studio right now?
Yeah.
How’s it going?
Very well. All the drum tracks are totally done, and guitar tone is set and Anders has done the long song. We’re going to do guitars on one song, then I’m going to do vocals, because we do the whole setup so I can alternate so I don’t burn out the voice. You know, we’re going to have the first song written, really, finished today.
It’s good that you’re taking care of your voice, because I saw you at MDF and I have no idea how you can do what you do for an entire hour.
Me neither. Sometimes, life is a bit of a struggle, but it’s intense live because then no one can really . . . you can’t rewind and listen to it again. Well, you can on YouTube. In the studio, you need to be perfect 100%, all the time. Continue reading »
We have three music premieres coming your way today, but before we begin rolling them out, here are a couple of quick notes that caught my eye this morning.
AT THE GATES
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know by now that Sweden’s At the Gates have recorded a comeback album entitled At War With Reality that’s due for release by Century Media on October 27th in Europe and October 28th in North America. Today the band revealed the cover art for the album (above), which was created by one of our favorite metal artists, Costin Chioreanu (twilight13media.com). As for the relationship between the art and the album, and how Chioreanu came to be involved in the project, we received a press release that included these statements.
From AtG vocalist/lyricist Tomas Lindberg:
“The concept of At War with Reality is based on the literary genre called ‘Magic Realism’. The main style within this genre is the notion that ‘reality’ is ever-changing, and needs to be constantly re-discovered and re-conquered. We felt that Costin’s artwork style would be the perfect visual contribution to this album, so he became the natural choice…” Continue reading »
In mid-June we reported that Sweden’s groundbreaking At the Gates had started recording their comeback album, At War With Reality. Today, our e-mail in-box received a further report from the band’s label, Century Media, and it’s welcome news: The recording, mixing, and mastering of the album is now complete and release dates have been established: October 27th in Europe and October 28th in North America.
The press release also included this statement by ATG vocalist Tomas Lindberg:
“We are very excited to finally have finished this new album. An album that we’ve been working on for over a year now. It’s by far the most challenging record that we have made, but it’s an honest album and I think that you will feel that it is faithful to the legacy of AT THE GATES.
“We have, through the process of creating it, been true to ourselves and our art. From hearing the first demos that Anders presented to the band last summer, through the extensive stages of songwriting, pre-production, rehearsals, recording and mixing, we now finally got the finished album in our hands. Continue reading »
Jet-setter that I am, I’m on the road again this week in my old hometown of Austin, Texas. Until last night I haven’t had as much time as usual to check out new music or write about it. I missed a lot, and am trying to catch up before having to leave the world of metal for the rest of today.
I discovered so many things I want to recommend that I’ve divided them into three parts, this being the first.
DECAPITATED
In advance of their new album Blood Mantra (scheduled for September 26 release by Nuclear Blast), Poland’s Decapitated have begun streaming a new song entitled “The Blasphemous Psalm To The Dummy God Creation”. It’s being released as a digital single via Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, or direct from Nuclear Blast (here). Continue reading »
I just saw a press release from Century Media in the NCS in-box that elevated by pulse rate: It announces that the seminal Swedish melodic death metal band At the Gates have completed pre-production work and are now ready to begin recording their new album, At War With Reality.
The album will be recorded by the same line-up who recorded Slaughter of the Soul (1995), and studio updates are expected either later this month or in July. The album is projected for release in October or November of this year. After the jump, you can watch a brief video message from vocalist Tomas Lindberg providing further details about the upcoming recording sessions.
To be honest, this is an enterprise seemingly fraught with peril. On the one hand, after having seen this band perform twice in recent years, including at MDF XII, I could hardly be more excited to hear new songs from them. On the other hand, how can they top themselves — or even equal the massive impact their existing albums produced, given the passage of so much time? Continue reading »
We earlier reported a bit of a video tease from seminal melodic death metal band At the Gates which suggested that a new album might be on the way for the first time in almost two decades. And now, it’s official. Here’s a statement from the band; I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting a few passages of particular interest:
“So, here we are almost 24 years since the birth of AT THE GATES, and some 18+ years since our latest album Slaughter Of The Soul. A lot of years have passed and we have embarked on some life-changing reunion tours and shows the last couple of years.
“So, why make a new album you might ask, and why now? Well, what we learned from the last couple of years hanging out and playing shows together, is that we enjoy what we do to the fullest extent. We love playing music together, and we love to hang out as friends. But, as a musician, we constantly write new music. It’s a huge part of our identities.
“We are fully aware that we have made some very drastic statements in interviews as well as the closing words on the DVD about the longevity of AT THE GATES, but things change, situations change and people change. When Anders sent the first song last summer, we had zero expectations of the outcome. We only knew one thing – That it sounded amazing! At the time we weren’t even sure there would be an album, but as things progressed, more songs came into existence, and we knew we were on to something great. Continue reading »
I just read a post at Metal Injection that elevated my heart rate significantly above its usual slothlike repose. I have nothing else to add to what Greg Kennelty wrote, so I’m simply going to post it here to spread the exciting news. Feel free to excrete reproductive juices in the Comments.
“Oh my God I am so excited right now. Just minutes ago, At the Gates took to their Facebook page to post the below video. There was no description given or title for the video, and there is no description listed on YouTube. The comments section is also disabled.” Continue reading »
We’ve been singing the praises of Bandcamp since the early days of that platform. In a relatively short time, it has become a vital source for the streaming and distribution of metal, recently expanding its service to become a vehicle for the distribution of merch as well as digital music in a variety of high-quality formats. One sign of Bandcamp’s success is the increasing use of the site by metal labels to stream and distribute albums in their catalogues.
Thanks to MaxR at Metal Bandcamp — which remains THE best way to keep up with the appearance of new metal releases on Bandcamp — we’ve learned that two more labels have recently established Bandcamp beachheads: Earache Records and Osmose Productions.
EARACHE
As far as we’re concerned, this is really big news. Earache Records was founded in the late 80s and was one of the true pioneers in releasing extreme music. Of course, they’re still going strong today, but their back catalogue is like a museum for the history of hardcore and metal.
So far, Earache has added five albums from their catalogue to Bandcamp: Slaughter of the Soul by At the Gates (1995); Five Serpent’s Teeth by Evile (2011); Pressure and Time (Redux) by Rival Sons (2012); Scum (1987) [Full Dynamic Range 2012 Edition] by Napalm Death; and From Enslavement To Obliteration (1988) [Full Dynamic Range 2012 Edition], also by Napalm Death. Continue reading »
“We are blind to the world within us… waiting to be reborn.”
No more badass sentence could’ve been uttered to brace you for the impact of this album.
Five bands define melodic death metal for me: At The Gates, Arch Enemy on their first three records, Soilwork pre-Natural Born Chaos, In Flames on Jester Race and Whoracle, and Carcass on Heartwork. If a band isn’t borrowing from these audio “how to do melodic death metal right” 101 manuals, I usually have no interest in their music. While others were busy playing with themselves over how folksy or even poppy they could make their melodies, these three bands knew how to bring the melody, the darkness, and the intensity, all in a single package.
Obviously, you know who I’m talking about today: Slaughter Of The Soul is one of my top 20 albums of all time.
I’ve already touched on my love for this album in a prior installment of my Revisiting the Classics series (which I really need to get off my ass and continue). I labeled it with accolades such as “The melodic death metal standard”. I still stand by this, although I do think there is more than one standard (and others will eventually appear on this list). This album is vicious, fast (a must), memorable, and technical, all at once.
The riffs may not seem like much to some, but the intricacy with which they were crafted is to me simply self-evident. Such careful attention was paid to the melodies, which are tastefully direct and no-nonsense. That guitar tone that sounds like the impact of a sledgehammer splitting a hunk of stone still gets me every time as well, not to mention the inhumanly tight playing of guitarists Anders Björler and Martin Larsson. Continue reading »