Accoring to Soundsblog.it, Saturday's (May 17) AT THE GATES concert at the Metalitalia Festival in Milan, Italy marked the first time the band has ever performed without rhythm guitarist and founding member ?Anders Björler. Afew hours prior to the show, it was announced that Björler had to stay behind in his home country of Sweden due to "acute food poisoning." The band decided to go on and play an abbreviated set as a four-piece while apologizing to the fans and promising to return to Italy soon to perform a full concert.Video footage of AT THE GATES singer Tomas Lindberg announcing Björler's absence to the Italian audience can be seen below, along with a live rendition of "Under A Serpent Sun", filmed at the Milan gig.Photos of the show are available on Soundsblog.it.AT THE GATES will enter the studio in June to begin recording its comeback album, "At War With Reality", for an October/November release via Century Media Records.Lindberg recently told Decibel magazine about what happened to change the bandmembers' minds about making a new CD in the six years since the AT THE GATES reunion was first announced: "I think a lot happened, mentally, when we decided to continue touring. When we started to do the global thing in 2011. That whole idea of being an active band, touring and hanging out, just grew on us, I guess. "To be able to be in a band that has no internal problems whatsoever, to be able to tour around the world together with some of your best friends, it's just incredible, mind-blowing even. Then the idea just grew on us. "I play in a band that involves some of my favorite musicians and songwriters and we are all still very hungry, creatively. I think that you can hear that in all our other projects, they are very alive and pushing boundaries still from Anders' [Björler, guitar] solo album, to AGRIMONIA, to the new reinvigorated THE HAUNTED lineup, to DISFEAR and LOCK UP, to PARADISE LOST and VALLENFYRE. We feel that we have great and relevant new music in us. And we know how important this next album will be. "When Anders came around saying that he had been jamming some new ideas around, it was not hard to make the decision to go 'all in,' so to say. "I know it's kind of a gamble or what you want to call it. But this is a very creative album that we are writing right now, it's not a comfortable 'Slaughter Of The Soul Pt. 2' or anything like that, it's an album that I feel is pushing our own boundaries, and challenges our collective creative intellect. And that is the main reason for us to do this, it's for our own sake. "We could easily go out and continue touring the old stuff successfully for quite a while, I think, but this is us putting ourselves on the line here, and we do that solely because we feel that we need to do this, this material is too strong to say no to."Lindberg also spoke about not wanting to live up to people's expectations of making another album in the vein of "Slaughter Of The Soul"."We have gone beyond the idea of making 'Slaughter Of The Soul Pt. 2', which was actually never the idea to start with," he explained. "This is an album that is so full on conceptually and creatively, so involved and ambitious that I am almost compelled to call it pretentious. And that brings me back to the feeling that was with us when we were creating 'With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness'. I'm not saying that this album sounds like that album, but it has that burning urge, the sense of importance that album is trying to portray. "As I have always stated, we are an honest band, a band that is very focused on being true to ourselves and never follow any trends or try to portray a given perception of what people want us to be. "What we decided on was really to let the music take us where it had to go, to go 'all in,' so to say. "To answer your question, the record will be filled with a lot of the SLAYER worship and riffage that is 'Slaughter Of The Soul', but people will also recognize the more dark, melodic side that was 'With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness', and maybe some of the more pretentious arrangements that was part of our early career."
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