At the Gates
To Drink From The Night Itself

I'm a bit out of the loop, so I wouldn't know the current level of regard today's music listeners have towards heavy/heaviest metal, much less the consideration given to the Swedish At the Gates, a cornerstone of Scandinavian Death Metal already active in the last century.

It's a common opinion among aficionados in the field that their fourth work, "Slaughter of the Soul," dating back to the late nineties, even though it arrived at a moment when the genre had abundantly said [and reiterated] everything it had to say to the last macabre syllable, represented one of the most successful moments of all-out metal forged in old Europe.

After that album, our armored Vikings decided to shake hands and hang up their metal gear.
No one could ask for better: ending on a high note is something exceedingly rare, precious, and commendable.

Yet, the story is known to the grim followers of the continental metal scene:
following a break of more than two decades, the nail on which they had hung their armor and iron clubs must have come loose from the wall, and upon picking up the equipment from the sordid floor, they realized they still wanted to play & rampage together.

This newly released work is the second album in four years and sees the departure of the historical lead guitarist Anders Björler, for whose replacement someone named Jonas Stålhammar was called: obviously, I have no idea who he is, but I wrote this just to highlight the notable å with the little circle above.

If you have that minimum of working familiarity with the group and the genre, you should broadly know what to expect:

- the usual melee of lecherous voices from beyond the grave sketching romantically putrid and cadaverous melodies;
- sturdy ultra-saturated guitars that chase each other (their happy trademark) at more or less frenetic speeds;
- a healthy rhythmic section full and pounding that congests the sound in any silent recesses.

It must be said that the album starts off well too: the killer riff of the blazing title track and the sinuous brutal melodic vocal line lead you straight back to their (small) masterpiece mentioned above.
That healthy touch of suffocating romanticism as only the best European exponents in the field are capable of dispensing.

You feel like you're twenty again (minus), and you want to headbutt down your home log cabin.
And this is nice, ça va sans dire.

But things aren't exactly like that: You have them all on your back, and I think they aren't joking either.

But the real question is:
could this album ever ignite the anomalous sparkling spark (shining brightly) that achieves the liquefying miracle of San Gennaro, namely making a difference amidst a million old and new releases of the same sort?

The honest previous album, perhaps due to the excessive rust accumulated during the long pause, certainly wasn't able to do so.

This sentimental and graveyard new artifact, even while sounding quite solid & varied, when it's good, mostly rehearses/recycles the same riffs without bringing any significant new element or particularly bright and intriguing solutions: you might as well recover the original and keep listening to that.

I also realize that talking about novelty and mix of ideas in this specific sulfurous field is like talking about rope in a hanged man's house.
So I will remain silent.

In short: maybe I am the one who over time has become tediously hypercritical, having devoured tons of these delicacies, but as for the album, at a glance (and especially by ear), I'm not entirely convinced.

To the posterz of Etdegheits, the arduous verdict.

UH!