52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #5

At The Gates – Slaughter of the Soul

(Earache, 1995)

Buy the album here

The second album in a row on the blog with “slaughter” in the title (c’mon metal bands…), and the second band in a row on the Bloodstock 2018 bill. Seeing At The Gates at Bloodstock in 2008, spinning round in a mud pit, is still one of my greatest music memories. While the new material is not up to the standard of Slaughter of the Soul, it’s amazing to see them live when it seemed like it would never happen. The appeal of this At The Gates release over its predecessors is the faultless melding of fun pop brevity and extreme metal sounds. While the melodic death metal movement that At The Gates are credited with spearheading was more palatable than the brutality of outright death from other parts of Sweden, Europe, and America, this is still heavy, heavy shit with some ferocious musicianship. What the band embraced in recording Slaughter of the Soul is that death metal, while messed up and brutal, should be infectious, fun, and fast. No song clocks in over 4 minutes in duration, and this 11-track album is barely 34 minutes long, which is to say that At The Gates obviously liked Iron Maiden, but probably preferred Slayer. While they have influenced metalcore bands like Killswitch Engage, let’s focus on all the sounds that make this album from 1995 stand up so well today.

And let’s start with the first sound: an electrical buzz as if a guitar was being plugged in to an amp. It builds anticipation that increases with each eerily slicing sound effect, culminating in a furious burst of energy. The classically clean production of melodic death metal is infused with thrash-inspired speed that barely relents over the following 30 minutes. “Blinded By Fear” sets the tone sonically and thematically with galloping riffs, smooth lead guitar details, piston drums, and the lyrical creation of hell on earth. At The Gates are preoccupied with a world they see turning on itself, cracking under self-inflicted pressure, and the first of many mentions of suicide is both literal and a metaphor for the self-harming behaviour of humanity as a whole. The pop sensibility I mentioned might seem unlikely at this point but, after the perfectly framed MTV video quality of the opener, title track “Slaughter of the Soul” highlights the band’s focus on immediacy. The opening riff pauses just long enough for vocalist Tomas Lindberg to shout “Go!” and kick everything off in an almost cheap, but undeniably effective, pit-starting moment. Lindberg repeats the trick with a call of “Do it!” just before the pitch perfect solo turning this track into a formidable pop death hit. Don’t be mistaken, the band still embrace the dense and distorted guitar sound, near-permanent double bass pedal, and frosty growl that gives At The Gates such intense atmospherics, but there is a focus on grabbing attention quickly and efficiently. The fact that the Björler brothers, responsible for most of the songwriting on this album, take these elements then do so much with them in such little time is what makes this one of the best heavy metal albums I’ve heard.

They went on to prove their prowess in this regard with several of their releases with The Haunted following the original break-up of At The Gates, but it’s on Slaughter of the Soul where you’ll find their most vital work. “Nausea” is like travelling down river in a barrel: filled with periods of disorienting buffeting and tranquil floating but always thrilling and potentially nauseating. “Need” ups the game, tossing its listeners furiously across the room for little more than 2 minutes. It’s like being accustomed to a gentle jog on the treadmill at the gym then signing up for a HIIT class: it’s hard and fast, but you get so much more done. It’s built on unforgivingly heavy drumming from Adrian Erlandsson, thrashy verse riffs, and typicaly expansive melodic death metal passages that come together to create a bleak yet uplifting plea to “lay your fears to rest”. With all the similes I’ve used in describing these two tracks though, I think the most fitting one for the album as a whole is that it feels like riding a galloping horse through a Mordor-like landscape, dodging arrows, slaying orcs, but every now and again you fall from the saddle, your foot caught in the stirrup, and you are dragged painfully over broken ground. But in a good way.

“Suicide Nation”, “World of Lies”, and “Unto Others” all do this. Each of these tracks has undeniable groove embedded in their opening moments, but the unbridled pace will have you wondering how to get back on your horse. The pop sensibility shows through again at the start of “Suicide Nation” with the shotgun cocking sound effect that ignites the song, but in “World of Lies” it is the album’s biggest and catchiest riff that steals the show. Coming at the perfect moment to reenergise a potentially battered listener for the final few songs, “World of Lies” is brimming with energy and a delightfully bouncing heavy sound that will keep your head banging all day long. “Unto Others” harks back to Terminal Spirit Disease more than any other track here, but its raspy viciousness is the perfect antidote to the giant super groove of “World of Lies” and sends the album in the direction of “Nausea”. On such a focused and brief album, this three-song passage is perhaps the most memorable.

And memorable is exactly what “Cold” and “Under a Serpent Sun”, my favourite tracks here, are. They are arguably the band’s collective shining moment, with sickeningly distorted leads (the solo at the 2-minute mark of “Cold” is insane), absorbing basslines, furious riffing, and some exceptional cymbal and snare work from Erlandsson all clamouring for attention. And they are without doubt Lindberg’s finest tracks as lyricist and vocalist. His delivery of the lines, “I feel my soul go cold/Only the dead are smiling” and “Stricken numb by fear I fall” are two of my favourite things in music and are eternally with me, while his ferocity on “Under a Serpent Sun” is unmatched anywhere in At The Gates’ work. And this is why Slaughter of the Soul means so much to me. That, while it is brutal, obsessed with suicide imagery, and punishing at times, it is so memorable that the songs just appear in my brain at random moments causing me to spit out lyrics like “Under a serpent sun we shall all live as one” while testing the ripeness of avocadoes in the supermarket, or banging my head to a silent beat while walking down a crowded street. All the members of At The Gates probably don’t realise this, but they’re my friends and always in my thoughts. Except Adrian Erlandsson… because I told him.