At The Gates
Gardens Of Grief

THE REVIEW

Listening to this EP and their career's final episode means listening to two records that are light-years apart from each other. And although this might be more than legitimate when many years pass from the beginning to the end of a career, it doesn't seem so logical knowing that their contribution to the metal scene lasted just 4 years.

Those who only know the most famous chapters of their discography won't find in this EP what characterized their success, but something entirely different. I believe you will find yourselves completely bewildered just as I did when I got to know them by starting to listen to (by sheer coincidence) their last album, and then went backwards through the years, discovering this "Gardens Of Grief," the band's historic debut.

An unsettling album starting with the cover, which already hints at the atmosphere pervading the songs (look at it carefully, it certainly doesn't exude brightness). In fact, the musical grooves follow one another slow and heavy, lacking the fast outbursts that will later become their trademark in the years to come. The typical characteristics of dark Scandinavian death are more than evident, forming a rich sonic weave less spartan than that of their overseas cousins, who were conceiving something entirely different during the same years.
Today, it's easy to say these things, but who knows what impressions the "freshness" contained in these compositions aroused back then, and which audience segment (albeit narrow, because we true metallers are aware) it impacted. In short, unsettling sounds, where we find a deep voice that occasionally transforms into insane and sick screaming.

This record represents an important debut in the metal scene, as At The Gates were among the very first pioneers of the "made in Sweden" genre to which they later contributed melody and a certain taste for arrangement, which as you might have realized is almost completely missing here.

There is little else to add about this work based on 4 songs, which however do not flow at all easily: the sounds are among the heaviest I have ever encountered in music and (with considerable effort) one barely glimpses a melodic glimmer. "Slaughter Of The Soul" is still very, very far away. Dedicated only to collectors and those who love the darker sounds of the early '90s, which gave birth to everything we today universally know as Swedish death metal.