At The Gates - The Nightmare of Being [CD]

Undisputed masters of Swedish death metal, At The Gates have always been a fearless force for creative thinking. Formed in Gothenburg in 1990, the band’s highly influential take on the burgeoning extreme metal formula swiftly thrust them to the forefront of the underground. Over the years that followed, they demonstrated an intensity and artistic hunger that few of their contemporaries could match. Their first two albums – The Red In The Sky Is Ours (1992) and With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness (1993) – eschewed the straightforward, melodic approach of their home-town peers in favour of a dark and progressive strain of full-bore brutality, with artful atmospherics and an underlying sense of otherworldly unease. After sharpening up both their sound and their songwriting for 1994’s Terminal Spirit Disease, At The Gates delivered the mother of all melo-death masterpieces in 1995. Slaughter Of The Soul remains a revered benchmark for both its creators and the metal scene in general, despite the premature dissolution of the band up shortly after its release. During the years that followed, At The Gates’ reputation grew and their influence on a generation of metal bands became abundantly apparent. A second chapter began in earnest in 2008, with a series of acclaimed reunion shows, before At The Gates made a full-scale comeback to action with fourth album At War With Reality in 2014: a sophisticated and intricate return to top form that also introduced numerous new weapons into the Swedes’ armoury. Faster and nastier than its predecessor, 2018’s To Drink From The Night Itself provided further proof that the band’s 21st century incarnation was easily outstripping the musical achievements of the early years, and subsequent live shows were as intense and celebratory as any they have experienced. Fast forward to 2021, and At The Gates are poised to release what can only be described as the finest album of their careers to date. A concept album that explores the dark revelations contained in pessimist philosophy, The Nightmare Of Being unveils a newly liberated and adventurous At The Gates, via some of the bravest and most mesmerising material they have ever written. As vocalist and co-founder Tomas Lindberg Redant explains, the new album’s concept emerged from an intense period of reading and reflection. “I had just read something by Thomas Ligotti – he writes horror and there’s a lot of Lovecraft-like, dark philosophy in there, the philosophy of pessimism. Then I found Ligotti had written another book called The Conspiracy Against The Human Race, which is more a biography of pessimist thought. I thought, ‘Wow, this is cool…’ and when I started reading that, it was him defending his worldview and going into detail about other pessimistic writers that had come before and how they can sometimes be connected to the horror genre. He namedropped so many people in that book, that it became a starting point for finding all this other stuff, and then I kn