New At the Gates?

[Traxan]

http://loudwire.com/at-the-gates-new-album-2014/



The Internet has just exploded, as legendary Swedish metal act At the Gates have released a mysterious teaser calling for something big in 2014.

Formed in 1990, At the Gates began as a death metal band, but as the act’s music evolved, they basically laid out the path for the creation of metalcore. At the Gates have released four studio albums, with their final opus, ‘Slaughter of the Soul,’ perhaps acting as the band’s most celebrated work. At the Gates brought death metal into a more melodic direction with ‘Slaughter of the Soul.’ Although metalcore broke in the early 2000s, listening to At the Gates’ 1995 album feels like a Nostradamus-esque prediction of how metal would evolve.

At the Gates reformed for just a year in 2007 before coming back together once again in 2010. The band has been dormant since their most recent reunion, playing a handful of shows and releasing no new material. However, with At the Gates’ “2014″ teaser, there is reason to believe that At the Gates could possibly unleash new material this year.

The short teaser could mean a great number of things. At the Gates could embark on a full-on tour, announce re-releases from their ’90s catalogue or just about anything else the mind could speculate. Vocalist Tomas Lindberg claimed in 2012 that a new At the Gates album wouldn’t be impossible in the future, but only time will tell.

Keep your eyes and ears open for the meaning of At the Gates’ mysterious message.

 

[Shpongled]

I would be just fine with a new At The Gates album.

And by just fine I mean fuck yes please let this happen.

 

[nckissfan]

teaser? haha, that sure is a tease.

 

[Talking Backwards]

So would this actually sound like something other than more The Haunted with the original ATG vocalist?

 

[stefan86]

No.

 

[Dead Winter]

Never understood the big deal with ATG. I like them, sure, but I like Carcass much better. I think ATG got huge again when everyone in the metalcore scene started name-dropping ATG as if they were some unknown band to the rest of us who have been listening to metal for longer than 5 minutes. It'll be interesting to see what they've got in store and if they can outdo Carcass' new album.

 

[Talking Backwards]

Never understood the big deal with ATG. I like them, sure, but I like Carcass much better. I think ATG got huge again when everyone in the metalcore scene started name-dropping ATG as if they were some unknown band to the rest of us who have been listening to metal for longer than 5 minutes. It'll be interesting to see what they've got in store and if they can outdo Carcass' new album.

http://www.metalsucks.net/2010/03/22/5-at-the-gates/

If you haven't read that entire topic yet (top ten list) it's pretty interesting, whether or not it's entirely accurate.

 

[Dead Winter]

"At the Gates opened the door for countless bands to write pop songs with aggressive overtones, rather than vice-versa."

That's exactly what happened. I couldn't have said it better myself. It's a tragedy that such a great band and great album spawned legions of total garbage. Again, however, they were a great band and SotS was a great album, but it wasn't amazing and the greatest thing to come along since sliced bread. Those aforementioned pop death/thrash bands built it up to be something it wasn't, and all of a sudden SotS is being spoken in the same breath as Master of Puppets. No. Just, no.

Although it had a fantastic sound and I like ATG, I curse that band and album at the same time because not only did they spawn a bunch of pale copycats, everyone became a lazy drummer and was playing polka beats to every song because of that album. One album like that is fine. A hundred albums like that are not.

DO PA DO PA DO PA DO PA DO PA DO PA DO PA DO PA

*BREAKDOWN*

DO PA DO PA DO PA DO PA DO PA DO PA DO PA DO PA

 

[Traxan]

It's a tragedy that such a great band and great album spawned legions of total garbage.

Dude the same could be said for Metallica and Slayer. How many mediocre bands did Puppets and Reign launch?

The fact is, SotS also gave us In Flames, Soilwork, Amon Amarth and my favorite, Shadow. That's good enough to counterbalance the mallcore crap like All That Remains.

 

[Shpongled]

Dude the same could be said for Metallica and Slayer. How many mediocre bands did Puppets and Reign launch?

Bingo. I have no doubt these bands inspired infinitely more bullshit than At The Gates did. And even in 1995, At The Gates wasn't the only melodic death metal band out there inspiring younger, potentially misguided musicians. It's stupid to blame them for other bands' bad music.

 

[Shpongled]

aaaaand 6 minutes after making that last post, I check my email and find this:

Seminal Swedish metallers AT THE GATES are back! Following the heat of an ample and highly praised live-reunion, the pioneers of the "Gothenburg style" melodic death metal sound have announced that they are working on a comeback studio album with the classic line-up of their latest masterpiece effort from 1995, Slaughter Of The Soul, expected to be released worldwide by the end of 2014 via their new label partner Century Media Records.

AT THE GATES checked in with the following comment statement:

"So, here we are almost 24 years since the birth of AT THE GATES, and some 18+ years since our latest album 'Slaughter Of The Soul'. A lot of years have passed and we have embarked on some life-changing reunion tours and shows the last couple of years.
So, why make a new album you might ask, and why now? Well, what we learned from the last couple of years hanging out and playing shows together, is that we enjoy what we do to the fullest extent. We love playing music together, and we love to hang out as friends. But, as a musician, we constantly write new music. It's a huge part of our identities.

We are fully aware that we have made some very drastic statements in interviews as well as the closing words on the DVD about the longevity of AT THE GATES, but things change, situations change and people change. When Anders sent the first song last summer, we had zero expectations of the outcome. We only knew one thing - That it sounded amazing! At the time we weren't even sure there would be an album, but as things progressed, more songs came into existence, and we knew we were on to something great.

We know you are all curious about the new material, and to make a simple explanation of where we are at musically, we would describe it as a perfect mix between early AT THE GATES & 'Slaughter of the Soul'-era AT THE GATES, trying to maintain the legacy and the history.

We chose Century Media as a worldwide partner for the upcoming album. We have all been friends for years with people at the label. Jonas & Anders have a history with THE HAUNTED there (as well as Adrian with PARADISE LOST).

So, we hope to bring you updates about the progress of the new album soon. The plan is to record the album in June/July with a tentative release in October / November of 2014 on Century Media Records."

 

[theoden236]

hey, if they have the inspiration, i say go for it.

i remember reading an interview BB King did, and when the interviewer asked why he chose to keep on truckin' after saying he would be hanging up the towel, he came up with a rather silly but poignant answer that was like this: "one of my favorite actors is Sean Connery. He was in a movie called Never Say Never"

should be a good one

 

[Traxan]

hey, if they have the inspiration, i say go for it.

i remember reading an interview BB King did, and when the interviewer asked why he chose to keep on truckin' after saying he would be hanging up the towel, he came up with a rather silly but poignant answer that was like this: "one of my favorite actors is Sean Connery. He was in a movie called Never Say Never"

should be a good one

Ironic, since Sean Connery quit acting a decade ago. He was so pissed off after 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" that he walked away. Serious. That POS movie drove him out of movies.

 

[Dead Winter]

Dude the same could be said for Metallica and Slayer. How many mediocre bands did Puppets and Reign launch?

The fact is, SotS also gave us In Flames, Soilwork, Amon Amarth and my favorite, Shadow. That's good enough to counterbalance the mallcore crap like All That Remains.

I disagree. I would say Metallica and Slayer spawned better bands than ATG because Metallica and Slayer spawned bands like, well, At the Gates. Pretty much ALL of our extreme metal since the 1990s were directly influenced by Slayer and Metallica, that includes death metal, black metal, Viking metal, thrash metal, melodeath, etc. What's more, bands like In Flames and Soilwork weren't spawned by At the Gates and SotS because they were all playing around the same time. In Flames came out with Subterranean in 1995 and their masterpiece The Jester Race came out in 1996. SotS had just come out in 1995 as well. That's like saying Slayer spawned from Megadeth or Cannibal Corpse spawned from Obituary or that In Flames spawned from Dark Tranquillity.

The difference is that while Metallica and Slayer may have spawned a bunch of mediocre bands, the ratio of amazing to mediocre is overwhelmingly in favor of amazing. You can't say the same about SotS. That doesn't mean great bands haven't been influenced by SotS, but as I said earlier, SotS is held up as something it's not, mainly by the really shitty core scene. Even mainstream rock bands like Alice in Chains were hugely influenced by Slayer and they have nothing whatsoever in common aside from Tom screaming on Iron Gland. Metallica and Slayer's spectrum of influence is much, much farther-reaching and important than At the Gates', it's just that in our teeny tiny circle of music, everyone tends to cite SotS because it's popular to say so and has just been accepted as the law for some reason. If you were in any modern metal band and you didn't cite SotS, it was like you were ignorant and didn't know your music, but somewhere along the line it became so cliche' to say it that people said it just for cred. That's why that album spawned so many shitty bands.

Also, Arch Enemy at that time were WAAAAAAAY better than ATG.

 

[Dead Winter]

I'm listening to At the Gates right now and it's such a shame I can't enjoy it anymore. All the polka beat-playing, unimaginative drummers from just about every death/thrash metal band in the last ten to fifteen years have rendered it impossible for me to really enjoy this amazing album. Now instead of hearing ATG like I used to hear it, I hear all the copycats. It's like seeing something you can't un-see. I think it's what pushed me so hard to the doom/sludge/drone/stoner genre; it was like the polar opposite of all of this.

That said, listening to the album you can easily tell ATG is the fucking boss in this genre.

 

[Talking Backwards]

I still enjoy Slaughter quite a bit. The songs are rather short and sweet and they do have some very catchy riffs and vocal melodies. The only Carcass album I could ever get into also was Heartwork; which is fucking phenomenal, but that's their most accessible too I suppose.

Hmm, I didn't realize they had released another album last year. I'll have to check it out.

 

[Dead Winter]

'Tis great. Very Heartwork-ish.

 

[Traxan]

I disagree. I would say Metallica and Slayer spawned better bands than ATG because Metallica and Slayer spawned bands like, well, At the Gates. Pretty much ALL of our extreme metal since the 1990s were directly influenced by Slayer and Metallica, that includes death metal, black metal, Viking metal, thrash metal, melodeath, etc.

Uh, gotta disagree with you there, bubba. Melodic death metal is basically amped up Iron Maiden. Jesper said his goal with IF was to make a death metal version of Iron Maiden, with their twin guitar work. They just didn't have a singer of Dickinson's caliber.

And I agree, Arch Enemy was WAY better pre-Angela.

 

[Dead Winter]

Ok, In Flames' main influence was Iron Maiden, but are you seriously telling me that you don't believe Metallica and Slayer influenced most of our favorite bands from that era? Shit, Tomi from Amorphis, a band that has nothing to do with any of this, cites Slayer as his main influence. Ihsahn grew up on Metallica. In Flames is just one band in a whole sea of melodeath, and they're actually the worst since about 2000.

In any case, that's not my point. The point is that you mentioned that SotS gave us all the melodeath bands like IF, DT, Soilwork, etc., but it really didn't. It was the pioneer of the scene, but they were all playing at each others' shows back then. It's just that The Red in the Sky is Ours is so completely different and inferior to SotS that SotS paved the way with a new death metal sound. They didn't grow up listening to SotS. They didn't play air guitar when they were kids to SotS because it came out in 1995. They grew up listening to Maiden, Metallica, and Slayer. In other words, our favorite bands 15-20 years ago were influenced by our (and their) favorite bands 30 years ago. Sadly, the people who were influenced strongly by bands like ATG ended up making really terrible music, for the most part. Not everyone but the majority.

All the mediocre, faggoty core bands, however, ARE full of kids who were born in like 1995 and don't know any better. Metal somehow became trendy again and as such they ruined it with their horrible hybrid of hardcore and thrash/death metal. Everything turned into a name-dropping contest for these shitty bands because the only way anyone over the age of 15 would take them seriously was if they said they were influenced by someone great and prolific like ATG. They never mentioned Carcass. They never mentioned In Flames or Dark Tranquillity, even though their albums were all around the same time and The Jester Race is one of the best melodeath albums ever. They mentioned ATG specifically so they would have a shred of credibility in their skinny jeans and emo haircuts-now-turned-hipster-haircuts. What's easier to copy than a simple polka beat with breakdowns? Let's tune down and learn "solos", which all end up being sweep picking. Enter shitty music.

Sadly, the greatness of SotS is met with a sort of, "Oh god, here we go again" look on everyone's face whenever it's mentioned. However, it's still a great album and they're a great band. It's got great songwriting and great dynamics, it's just that it was copied and pasted by a bazillion other bands to the point of nausea. If you love one person's steak and they stop cooking it, then a bunch of other people start force-feeding you their sub-par steaks, pretty soon you're gonna become a vegetarian.

 

[Dead Winter]

I never liked The Haunted, however. Always seemed overrated. I think ATG during the mid-90's were in a special place and SotS is just one of those miraculous albums that just happened.

I still think Arch Enemy's early stuff like Bury Me an Angel and Diva Satanica blows ATG out of the water, but that's just me.