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Rating: I couldn't do it again. In fact, worse... this isn’t a double review, it’s a triple review (wow...). And to think I believe I have good reasons for doing it! (but it's five in the morning)
The reasons, essentially, are two. Namely, the already existing reviews of this album. With all due respect and esteem to the authors (even if I may not share their tastes), but honestly, I think saying that Slaughter of the Soul (the album in question) represents something more than an "essential purchase for every true metalhead" or "the Swedish Death Metal. Period" is warranted.
Whatever genre this dear band is proposing (one of the bands that marked my growth) I couldn't care less, I'm not even interested if now every week a band comes out citing In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, and Death (bands I mostly respect and/or love) among their inspirations and then churns out a fresh Slaughter of the Soul every month (something that led many fans to a curious reaction, namely repudiating this last album of the band and praising all the previous ones... ugh). I don't care even if in '95 they made an album that after 12 years - 12 most (for me all, but I want to try to be objective) of the bands that followed in the footsteps of At the Gates can’t match. I don't give a d***n that now melody is everywhere in metal, and that Meshuggah, who use just tonal dissonances, are more progressive and experimental.
What matters here is that this is excellent music. It’s music played with passion, with heart. It’s music played with relentless dedication and deep participation, these guys aren’t five frustrated teenagers because last month their allowance was cut (and here I might seem offensive, but naturally I'm deliberately exaggerating...). There are five people behind this album - two guitarists, a singer, a bassist, and a drummer - and all of their commitment is there, despite this world, beyond all pessimistic, optimistic, or realistic (i.e., pessimistic) considerations, may have tried to discourage them.
Art, besides meaning, is also the medium that brings to us (the audience) the meaning of the music, the artistic expression of the band. Therefore, I won’t tell you how wrong it is to choose a nihilistic lifestyle, or how it might instead be the only sensible solution, or how I don't care. These are personal matters, everyone decides (and the rest of the world says 'who cares?'). So I prefer to talk to you, to conclude, about the medium, this bridge, this means of communication (= art, indeed) that the songs contained in this album represent.
What to say. If I wrote with the same skill, passion, incisiveness, and stylistic coherence with which At the Gates wrote this album, forget Debaser, I’d be the direct heir of Scaruffi*.
Unmissable, sublime, grandiose, nihilistic, take all the adjectives you like, go search on Ondarock reviews, on Truemetal, in the dictionary of synonyms & antonyms (an effective method this...). And you'll never exhaust your search. This album is everything and nothing. Give it your meaning.
* it's a joke. Humor, present?
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Blinded by Fear (03:13)
We are blind to the
Worlds within us
Waiting to be born
I cast aside my chains
Fall from reality
Purgatory unleashed
Now burn the face of the earth
Purgatory unleashed
Now burn the face of the earth
The face of all your fears
All of your dreams unleashed
The face of all your fears
Born of the demon sky
Twisting reality
Sweet nauseating pain
Is death the only release?
Nauseating pain
Is death the only release?
The face of all your fears
All of your dreams unleashed
The face of all your fears
I cast aside my chains
Fall from reality
Suicidal diseases
The face of all your fears
Now covered with scars
Humanity exiled
Purgatory unleashed
Now burn the face of the earth
Purgatory unleashed
Now burn the face of the earth
The face of all your fears
All of your dreams unleashed
The face of all your fears
02 Slaughter of the Soul (03:04)
GO!
Never again
On your forcefed illusions to choke
You feed off my pain
Feed off my life
There won't be another dawn
We will reap as we have sown
Always the same
My tired eyes have seen enough
Of all of your lies
My hate is blind
There won't be another dawn
We will reap as we have sown
Reap as we have sown
Do it
Slaughter of the soul
Suicidal final art
Children - born of sin
Tear your soul apart
Never again
My tired eyes have seen enough
Of all of your lies
My hate is blind
There won't be another dawn
We will reap as we have sown
Reap as we have sown
Slaughter of the soul
Suicidal final art
Children - born of sin
Tear your soul apart
03 Cold (03:29)
To rid the earth of the filth
To rid the earth of the lies
To will the rise above
Tearing my insides out
I feel my soul go cold
Only the dead are smiling
To rid your heart of all lies
Their poison tongues, poison hearts
Burning cold...
Now let the final darkness fall
I feel my soul go cold
Only the dead are smiling
"...The dream of the new disease
On wings of euphoria..
Sucking terror from the needle scars..."
22 years of pain
And I can feel it closing in
The will to rise above
Tearing my insides out
I feel my soul go cold
Only the dead are smiling
04 Under a Serpent Sun (04:00)
Web of corruption thick with deceit
The language of destruction, the slaughter of the meek
Under a serpent sun - we shall all live as one
No rest for the wicked, the children of god
The final retribution, the final curtain torn
Within us - the falmes of the end
Survival of the fittest, the hunt for the sacred game
Under a serpent sun - we shall all live as one
Children of chaos - born of the holocaust seed
Inherit the addiction, angels of genocide breed
Within us - the falmes of the end
Survival of the fittest, the hunt for the sacred game
Under a serpent sun - we shall all live as one
Sweetfleshed, hellbent creature
Artist of the fevered soul
Heavenly venomous rapture
Stricken numb by fear I fall
06 Suicide Nation (03:37)
Utopia - lost in chaos
As the sky turns black
Suicidal legacy
There is no turning back
Retribution answers cold
Moving in for the kill
Deep hideous festering
Bestial epidemic, repulsive need
Control, control
Suicide nation
Mass-appeal, death-addiction
Dead but dreaming
Restrained by phobia, brainwashed into submission
Control, control
Suicide -jaws locked around your spine
"The face of evil is always the face of total need.."
-W.S. Burroughs, "Deposition"
Testimony Concerning A Sickness
Retribution answers cold
Moving in for the kill
Deep hideous festering
Bestial epidemic, repulsive need
Control, control
Suicide - jaws locked around your spine
07 World of Lies (03:37)
Degeneration tears your blackened eyes
The final descent for the last in life
No joy in our tired lives - the torment builds inside
The sun sets forever on a world of lies
World of lies
World of lies
Non-divine
Release me
Demonic vultures feed on your mind
Disarmed of all your pride you die
No life in our alien eyes - the blind lead the blind
The sun sets forever on the non-divine
World of lies
World of lies
Non-divine
Release me
Final psychotic eclipse
Painted in the colours of war
Final psychotic eclipse
A world drenched in blood
Degeneration tears your blackened eyes
The final descent for the last in life
No joy in our tired lives - the torment builds inside
The sun sets forever on a world of lies
World of lies
World of lies
Non-divine
Release me
"And it's his illusions about what
constitutes the real world which are
inhibiting him...
His reality, his reason, his society
...these are what must be destroyed"
-Luke Rhinehart, "The Dice Man"
Final psychotic eclipse
Painted in the colours of war
Final psychotic eclipse
A world drenched in blood
08 Unto Others (03:13)
You hold high the banner of self-deceit
Encaged in the dogmas of life, you join the elite
My Judas-windows stay shut - shut forever more
My Judas-windows stay shut - shut forever more
You mock the weak for not giving you their trust
In your world of make beleive, where statues turn to dust
My Judas-windows stay shut - shut forever more
My Judas-windows stay shut - shut forever more
You walk through what is me
Stare blind - cannot see
Your thoughts flee to a different land
They are free, but but you are bound.
Silenced forever, the walls are closing in
The keys to our damnation - burial within
My Judas-windows stay shut - shut forever more
My Judas-windows stay shut - shut forever more
09 Nausea (02:25)
Release me from your world of lies
I cannot bear this pain
Degenerate machinery
The monster we create
Nausea, oh sweet nausea
Genetic barcode hell
Mental genocide
Repulsive human shells
Choke on the fruits of life
Nausea, oh sweet nausea
Cold stare, starving eyes
Blinded, tired lives
Release me from this pain
Unknown to man
Nausea, oh sweet nausea
Cold stare, starving eyes
Blinded, tired lives
Release me from this pain
Unknown to man
10 Need (02:38)
Open me, with your kiss of steel
End my pain - set me free
For we are enslaved, forever enslaved
Open me, with your kiss of steel
End my pain - set me free
Live only to die some more
Need - killing yourself to live
For we are enslaved, forever enslaved
Lay your fears to rest, let your dreams awake
For we are enslaved, forever enslaved
Lay your hate to rest - open me
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Other reviews
By Norvheim
"Blinded By Fear, perhaps the best Death Metal track ever composed."
"NEED...so intense and dramatic that it is almost moving from certain points of view."
By Devin Davis
"The 'Master Of Puppets' of death metal, that's how I would define 'Slaughter Of The Soul' by At The Gates."
"For anyone who considers themselves a true metalhead, purchasing this album is mandatory, mandatory, and mandatory."
