At The Gates Album: “Slaughter of the Soul [Bonus CD]”

I wrote a four-star review of this album a while ago, saying I didn't find it as good as advertised, but since then I've come to appreciate it a lot more. Although the songs on "Slaughter of the Soul" are very accessible by death-metal standards, thanks to ample doses of melody, it's really the album's complexities that make it great. And while these nuances may not be readily apparent, given time they all emerge and come together to form one amazing album. Eventually I was able to appreciate the subtle changes in tempo, the killer guitar harmonies, the absurdly tight drumming, and the melding of melody and heaviness that At The Gates put into their music. The opener, "Blinded by Fear," crams about as much speed, heaviness, and intricacy into three minutes as is humanly possible, and the album rarely misses a step after that. And topping it all off is Tomas Lindberg, a unique vocalist whose throaty scream perfectly matches the intensity of the music. Now, making it even better, is a reissued version with some extra goodies for us fans. "Legion," their cover of a song by a band called Slaughterlord, is an excellent thrash song with lots of heavy riffing. "The Dying," the unreleased track from the "Slaughter of the Soul" sessions, isn't quite as good as the songs that made the album (makes sense) but it still rips. The real highlight of the extra tracks, though, is At The Gates's cover of Slayer's classic "Captor of Sin." With Tomas doing the vocals, it sounds as every bit as vicious and scary as the original (it's also nice to hear the band doing full-on guitar solos). There are also demo versions of the songs "Unto Others" and "World of Lies," which have a rawer (and in my opinion better) sound than the versions on the album. As a whole, the bonus songs make me more than happy that I traded in my copy of the original version of this album to buy the reissue. I encourage other fans to do the same.

If there ever was an essential purchase for a death metal fan this album would be it. In the roots of the New Wave of Swedish Death Metal, At the Gates stood high above the rest. Although somewhat comparable in brutality and catchiness to "Clandestine" by Entombed, "Slaughter..." has much stronger songwriting and much more tighter and well-constructed songs. The sound here is fast, razor-sharp duel-guitar harmonies, pounding double-bass and shrieking, ungodly vocals. There's not a bad cut on the record even though some of the luster wears off by the end. At the time this was released this was the most brutal and complete death metal albums I had ever heard. If you don't own this, but it now.

Now this is a flat-out thrash album, the little tremolo picking that was present in TSD is also gone, save for on `Nausea'. Lindeberg's vocals are more constrained - no longer the uncontrollable gurgles and screeches they once were. The lyrics are also minimalistic, not as wordy and poetic as in the past. The new style has also constricted the drumming to the boring snare-bass pattern rather than the complex patterns and fills from TRITSIO and WFIKTBD. There are two ways you can think about this album - a) mourn over the loss of a unique death metal band that managed to capture dark, pensive moods with nihilistic death metal; or b) celebrate the birth of one of the best Swedish thrash bands. I do enjoy this album and consider it one of the band's best works, but don't let anyone fool you into believing this is the only album by the band worth your time, definitely check out the immensely under-appreciated TRITSIO because that showed the band at it's most original.

Highlights: Blinded By Fear, Cold, World Of Lies, Unto Others

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The majority of metalcore bands stole their sound from this CD. This CD is a classic in the field of melodic death metal. The guitar solos are nice and technical, the riffs are killer, and the vocals are awesome. Too bad most of the metalcore bands stole their sound and made it all mainstream. This band broke up before the metalcore surge. If you want metal that is fast yet melodic, this CD is for you.

Okay, the previous (negative) reviewers have all pointed out how this album is not as technical or as original as their earlier work. Having recently acquired the progressive With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness, I'll agree that Slaughter of the Soul's monolithic tempo, repeated riffs and conventional rock song structure don't match up to the weird, almost hiccupy changes in tempo, odd song structures, constantly changing guitar riffs and moments of shear silence on the previous album. There's nothing as blazingly original here as "Raped by the Light of Christ" or "Non Divine." Indeed these guys just don't -do- as much in three minutes as they did before.

But what this album lacks in technicality and progressiveness (proginess?) I'd argue that it makes up for in its sheer melodic/harmonic catchiness, a catchiness that leaves At The Gates' brutality untouched. It's an achievement that I can think of only one other band achieving in metal history, one that, like At the Gates, flirted with mainstream success but never quite made it: Testament, with their first album, The Legacy. No, At The Gates don't sound like Testament, but the combination of catchy melodic/harmonic hooks and aggression is what made The Legacy so great (along with Alex Skolnic's guitar solos, of course).

As with the Legacy, the fairly monolithic pace of Slaughter of the Soul makes it unrelenting in its assault. Far from making it less brutal, the catchiness of this album even enhances the brutality by boring the dark riffs and relentless rhythm into your subconscious. This, the wonderfully agonized vocals and the just-fuzzy-enough production make the album quite atmospheric, evoking inklings of some combination of despair and homicidal frenzy. It's not nearly as claustrophobic, frenzied or despairing as the greats of Black or Doom metal like Esoteric and Weakling, but the songs are catchier and more accessible and thus the atmosphere rubs off on you more easily. But then you'd hope it'd be brutal by as much as looking at the track list.

Speaking of which, if you don't want to read about the album in detail, skip to the end of this review. When I say something is `great' or awesome, I mean it simply sounds good. As I admitted before, this is not a very technical album.

Standout Tracks

"Blinded by Fear" is as wonderful an opening track as you can ask of this album. After a suitably ominous electronic fuzz and spoken-word clip it establishes the driving rhythm of the album and its dark atmosphere with great guitar riffing. There's a very brief bridge/solo in the last minutes, but it's extremely brief and doesn't make this song any 'slower' or more subtle while giving it a melodic edge that such a blunt instrument would normally lack. 5 stars

"Slaughter of the Soul" starts off with a very short, heavy intro section before going into the song proper. This is every other song on the album in a nutshell. Things are always changing enough that you don't get bored, but not so much you can't follow them. There's a really great interplay between the two guitars so that they compliment each other rather than dueling in total over-the-top metal fashion. 4 stars

"Cold" features a great solo and more fabulous guitar work, to the point it stands above the other excellent material on the album. 5 stars

"Into the Dead Sky" is a nice quiet instrumental interlude between musical blows to the face. It's not great and of itself but it fits perfectly. 4 stars

"Need" is in my opinion the best song of the album. Nice and varied, going from melody to melody on brutal guitar riffs until it fades out, almost serenely, into a single glockenspiel over silence.

So yeah. 11 catchy, brutal tracks together make one of the most accessible and most influential albums of the 90's. In addition to their Gothenburg contemporaries and successors it had a massive impact on metalcore-listen the Darkest Hour's The Mark of the Judas and you can't hope but hear the shadow of this album. In terms of making serious metal accessible, this album knows few peers save The Legacy by Testament and The Sham Mirrors by Arcturus. Indeed, I'd say that with this album At the Gates invented pop death metal, which is no mean feat.

I don't recommend this if you require your metal to be extremely technical (Opeth) or experimental (Ephel Duath) nor if you prefer it so raw that it sounds like it was recorded in bear's cave in some Scandinavian forest (Burzum, Leviathan) or so brutal that it makes you're eardrums bleed (Pig Destroyer). But if you like metal and you like good conventional rock songwriting, this is a treat.