At The Gates
Slaughter of the Soul

THE REVIEW

Swedish Death Metal. Period.

That alone would be enough to describe this monumental work. The opening is already self-explanatory; it starts with BLINDED BY FEAR, perhaps the best Death Metal track ever composed. Rarely had other songs been as evocative and visionary. A terrifying composition based on a direct and violent riff, devastating drum work, and small but well-placed doses of melody.

Before you can catch your breath, the title track looms over, performed at insane speed without sacrificing anything in technical prowess. Completing a triptych of rare beauty is COLD, a track featuring a collaboration with Andy LaRocque on guitar, in which Lindberg gives his best, singing expressively words as hard as stones.
The dramatic mood of the album is maintained high with the complex UNDER A SERPENT SUN and the haunting instrumental INTO THE DEAD SKY, in a crescendo that rises incessantly, reaching its pivotal points in the stunning UNTO OTHERS and NEED. And it is precisely with NEED that the "massacre of the soul" materializes; imagine, in fact, screaming with your last strength all your anger and despair. That's exactly what this track represents, so intense and dramatic that it is almost moving from certain points of view.

And so, after the conclusive THE FLAMES OF THE END, you will understand the true greatness of At The Gates' work, a work that is melodic without betraying itself, but above all knows how to combine sounds and words. Every lyric is nothing but a cynical, realistic, and misanthropic chronicle of a world dead on the path of self-destruction, a world bathed in the blood of innocents.

And so, the group's response to so much pain can only be extreme: destroy your soul and be truly free.

"for we are enslaved… forever enslaved"